Revista de Istorie și Teorie Literară (Dec 2023)
Șerban Cioculescu la Facultatea de Litere și Filosofie a Universității din Iași (25 mai 1946–31 august 1947)
Abstract
We publish and also comment three documents about the presence of literary critic Șerban Cioculescu as Professor in the Department of Modern Romanian Literature. He was summoned by a commission led by G. Călinescu, whose report was published initially in „Monitorul Oficial” [„Official Gazette”] on the 8th of July 1946. Șerban Cioculescu, in a book entitled Amintiri [Memories, 1981], recalled this episode. But, apart of this, there is a series of episodes which complete the picture. We refer to the juridical and political context. The laws of higher education were adopted during Ion Antonescu’s regime and were elaborated by a group supervised by the Minister of Culture and Cults, Ion Petrovici (1942). Those decision continued to function after the 23rd of August 1944, after Ion Antonescu had been arrested. But, between this date and the 30th of December 1947, when King Mihai I abdicated, the Communist Party expanded its authority and persecuted those who refused to accept the political compromise. Although Șerban Cioculescu would have been nominated as Professor from October the 1st 1946, he lectured in Iassy at the end of winter or in the very first days of sprit 1947. In the summer of 1947, a Govern commission decided that Șerban Cioculescu, among others, would be excluded from the universities on the 1st of September 1947.
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