The Novel of Memory as World Genre. Exploring the Romanian Case

The novel of memory is a subgenre with an impressive spatial and cultural range: it manifested itself in numerous countries in all parts of the world, and it emerged only some four decades ago. However, its existence remains troubling in many respects: it was theorized in the academia before being canonized in the national literary histories. Moreover, it thrived in the discourse of recent cultural studies, rather than in that of literary studies. While the phrase became commonplace in some countries such as post-Francoist Spain, where academics embraced it and numerous writers illustrated it, the novel of memory does not seem to spread from one country to another. One may speak of polygenesis, noticing how the subgenre flourishes in different countries simultaneously, indebted to a similar or related political and historical climate maybe, but not really to a decisive, towering literary influence. That is because the novel of memory springs from a concern with political identity, not with form, so it is not essentially influenced by mimetic aspirations to replicate international commercial success, but instead it is fuelled by national and local stakes and conditions. Still, this doesn't mean that the novel of memory is destined to remain a mere local phenomenon, or a branch of some local phenomena, uninteresting from the viewpoint of a systematic research of world literature or quantitative analysis on a global scale.