Dimitrie Cantemir’s „The Divan” between the educational and moralizing aims and empowerment of writing

Abstract

Anchored in a reception formula indebted to the interpretation suggested by Cantemir himself – imposed, actually, through the paratextual elements used specifically to this end – the debate of principles in the first book of The Divan can be re-read today as empowerment of the World and the Wise Man as characters with their own dynamic and development into discourse, and also with regard to reconsidering the (not only) persuasive function of rhetoric, as applied to the theme of the relation between the expansive-hedonistic and the restrained-stoic existential models.

Keywords

• Existential model
• educational-moralizing literature
• literary character
• re-reading