Multilingvismul și periferia: o analiză a romanului basarabean post-sovietic

Abstract

This article aims to explore how multilingualism is explored in Bessarabian literature and the way in which these phenomena can create cultural and identity crisis in the collective imaginary of The Republic of Moldova. Thus, it can be observed that in the Soviet period, but also after the fall of the empire, speakers of “Moldavian” language, afterwards named Romanian, are treated as inferior to Russian speakers, Moldavians becoming a periphery. Approaching multilingualism the way it is presented in Multilingual Literature as World Literature edited by Jane Hiddleston and Wen-chin Ouyang, a second objective of this paper is to investigate the identity crisis of the teenagers of Perestroika and the fall of the URSS, but also of the young adults that were brought up in the unsteady world that followed after these events. In doing so, the way in which the Bessarabian people were peripheral. According to the fact that this type of literature is insufficiently discussed, there will be analyzed three such novels, in order to offer a wider image of Chisinau between the 80’s and the 2000 and its transition: Grădina de sticlă (The Glass Garden) by Tatiana Țîbuleac, Sălbaticii copii dingo (The Savage Dingo Kids) by Vasile Ernu and Perestroika boys by Dinu Guțu. The other aspect that will be explored is the image of Romania and its literature in the Soviet Bessarabia, two neighbour countries that did not have an intercultural dialogue until 1991.