George Călinescu

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George Călinescu (June 19, 1899 - March 12, 1965, Bucharest) was a Romanian literary critic, writer and journalist, one of the outstanding figures of Romanian letters of 20th century.

He was born in Bucharest, where he later went to the university to study Italian, but much of his formative years were spent in Iaşi. He moved between these two centres for much of his life, as he gained his Ph.D. in Iaşi, and lectured at the university there before becoming a professor at the University of Bucharest in 1945.

Mostly remembered for his History of Romanian Literature from its origins to nowadays, an exhaustive review of Romanian authors and literary currents, he also published studies on major Romanian writers such as Mihai Eminescu, Ion Creangă, Nicolae Filimon, and Vasile Alecsandri. In his novels, he adopted a Balzac-inspired realism, celebrated in his Enigma Otliliei (The secret of Otilia), an acid picture of inter-bellum Bucharest small-bourgeoisie.

At the beginning of the Communist regime, Călinescu, like many other university professors, was banned from the University. Director of an obscure Romanian Instutute of Literary Theory and Folk Studies, he regained public stature only during the post-Stalinist decade. Accommodating the socialist propaganda, he was rehabilitated few years before his death, and eventually honored as the most important figure of Romanian literary critics.

[edit] External links

George Călinescu at the Internet Movie Database

[edit] Works

Literary critic and history

Principii de estetică (Principles of aesthetics), 1939.
Istoria literaturii române de la origini pînă în prezent (History of Romanian Literature from its origins to nowadays), 1941.
Sensul clasicismului (The mean of classicism), 1946.