Topics in Romanian Periodicals (1919-1944)

The data used in the following dataset was collected from the first volume "The Bibliography of the Relationships Between Romanian Literature and Foreign Literatures in Periodicals (1919-1944)" (Eds. Ana-Maria Brezuleanu, Ileana Mihăilă, Viorica Nișcov, Michaela Şchiopu, Cornelia Ștefănescu), published by the Romanian Academy in 1997. The dataset accounts for nearly all topics pertaining to foreign literatures published in Romanian periodicals active between 1919 and 1944. Nodes concerned with the periodicals were marked with an [R] for easy filtering.

Out of the 6455 articles included in the first volume of the Bibliography, only 2193 have been processed, the rest of them having topics that are either too nationally-oriented, too minor, or are not topics at all (i.e. literary reviews). Out of the 2193 articles, I managed to extract 90 topics (Table 1) spanning 268 magazines from all regions of Greater Romania (Bessarabia included). This data was mined from the Bibliography following its digitization, since in its analog form, any exploratory data analysis would have been painstakingly difficult to achieve. With all the necessary information at hand, this tool can be used extensively for a comparative analysis of literary influence and popular trends within Romanian modernist culture. The only downside concerning this lexicographical project is that it understandably lacks an equally comprehensive counterpart covering the reception of Romanian literature abroad.

Details describing the analysis of the dataset will be published in the following paper: Emanuel Modoc, Alex Goldiș, "Nationalizing International Prestige. Foreign Literatures in Romanian Interwar Periodicals", Transilvania 3, 2022 (forthcoming).