Latent Crusaders: Narrative Strategies of Survival in Early Modern Danubian Principalities, 1550-1750
1550-1750, Journal of Global Initiatives, Volume 6, Number 2, 2011, pp.31-48
18 Pages Posted: 28 Feb 2016 Last revised: 8 Jul 2016
Date Written: June 1, 2011
Abstract
The essay reveals that a master narrative strategy of gnostic-like national salvation presides over the early emergence of modernity in the area in which contemporary Romania is situated. This narrative strategy draws on the neo-Byzantine survival strategies of the Greek elites who ruled the Danubian Principalities (Moldova and Valahia) during the earlier stages of Romanian modernization (18th century). Early modem Romanian political and intellectual elites borrowed from the post-Byzantine political theology a set of Gnostic-inflected narrative strategies to explain their subordination to alien powers (Turkish, Ottoman, Russian, Austrian, or Hungarian). These strategies operated a reversal of "real" and "unreal" or of "essential" and "fleeting" attributes of social-historical situations. The aim of these strategies was to construct the local elites as the agents of a political ideology of national redemption that will ultimately put them above their temporary masters. The paper focuses mainly on the so-called Phanariot period (17th to 18th Centuries).
Keywords: Modernity, Romania, Romanian, Rhetoric, Discourse Analysis, Salvation, Eschatology, Political Discourse, National Identity, Legitimation
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