From itinerary to map, with “urban villagers” in the Romanian novel. A literary cartography

Abstract The present study has as its starting point a theoretical framework contained in the Neohelicon Journal previous numbers, to which recent studies relating literature and space are added, not from a common, geographical perspective, but demonstrating that the evolution of the novel is observed through the narrative analysis of the itinerary and the map. The case studies are taken from Romanian prose, the common point being the reference to space: Ion Ghica’s, A Journey from Bucharest to Iași before 1848, Duiliu Zamfirescu Love in the Countryside, Nicolae Rădulescu-Niger’s On the Azure Coast. A Winter in Menton in 1914, Camil Petrescu’s The Last Night of Love, the First Night of War and Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s The Disheveled Maidens. Our approach observes the interactions between rural and urban areas, their coexistence, and the inevitable presence of the “urban villager” who is connected to the functioning of the entire society, not only Romanian, but especially the “insular” or “peninsular” one, in the terms of Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza.