Matei Calinescu - The Metamorphoses of the Critical Concept

Abstract

The literary criticism Matei Calinescu practiced and theorized before his American exile had reverberations of the “Vianu model”, such as the passion for ideas, for the systematic study of literature, and for rigor. As a supporter of the primate of the axiological judgment, M. Calinescu has sympathies for neither Impressionism nor Structuralism. Although he was not gifted for a career as a literary chronicler, he contributed to the reconsideration of the aesthetical foundations of Romanian literature during the 1960s, shifting direction afterward towards compared literature and literary theory.