Retrospective Constructions of Cultural Masculinity in 19th Century Romania: The Memoirs on the Junimea Society

This article investigates the construction of cultural masculinity in the memoirs concerned with the Junimea literary society, founded in 1863 in Iași, especially in writings by Iacob Negruzzi, George Panu, Ioan Slavici, Titu Maiorescu, Nicolae Gane and C. Săteanu. Conforming to the norms of its time, Junimea was a literary society made exclusively of men of letters, either poets, prose writers, critics, historians, philologists, ethnologists, sometimes men of (exact) science. The memoirs left behind are written by former members of the society, which they remember fondly, and function as instruments of mythicisation of the (early stages of the) group, while at the same time endeavoring to „authenticate” their account with little-known anecdotes pertaining to the private peculiarities of the former colleagues. By revisiting the memoirs of the Junimea group from a perspective that includes the gender operator, the article will survey how cultural masculinity is retrospectively constructed through self-celebration, anecdote, irony, licentiousness, conviviality.