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636 UN DEBAT : LES MENTAUTES COLLECTIVES 6

VILLAGE MENTALITY AND WRITTEN CULTURE

cAtAlina velculescu

The attempt to define popular mentality — and particularly the charaeteristic rural State of inind — or rather what distinguishes it from the clerical or nobiliary one, is a difficult task. The preference for figuratiye speech and the orał expression has exposed the information to constant degradation in the course of time. Besides the morę abundant ethnographic eyidence or the evidence included in the restricted category of folk literaturę (referring to it only when being positive that it offers genuinely aneient documents), one also resorts to sources in which the presence of men who were not practising the art of writing makes itself deeply felt: documents, inscriptions, correspondence, results of certain inquosts after peasants’ uprisings¹.

We shall further discuss sonie of the traces in written literaturę, hoping to widen and vary the reference field established by forerunners. The idea that the folklore is part of the “substance of old Eomanian literaturę²” seems to be accepted today, although there was sonie oppo-sition initially. It concerns not only the folklore (in the sense of literaturę), but the entire orał culture as well.

The tendency to transmit knowledge ³ rather by word of mouth than through writing, used to characterize all the social strata in this country and mostly explains the poor information offered by the written sources about certain epochs ⁴. The force and duration of the preference for orality show the preponderence of the rustic element that has also given the specifio character (among other Eomanic languages) to the Latin spoken uninterruptedly after the Eoman conąuest on both sides of the Danube^s. We do not want to assert in this way the lack of a written culture among the Eomanians, but its use as a medium according to the internal laws of the orał. We shall illustrate this process, considering some characteristic situations:

1) relations of the orał culture, on the one hand, with historiography and with folk books, on the other ; 2) remarkable circulation of those translated works that were finding their correspondence in the local epic literaturę;

3) local adoptation oi; certain literary forms also used by the folklore;

4) transmission (copying) of manuscripts obserying specific rules of the

Florin Constanłlnlu, Aspecle ale mentalulul colrclio ln soclelalea medteoali rombneasci In “Studii ęi materiale de istorie medie", vol. II, 1974, pp. 69—100; David Prodan, R&scoala lul Horca, Cluj, Bucureętl, 1979.

* I. C. Chi(imJa, Próbie me de bazi ale Itleraluril romine Decki, Bueure$U, 1972, mostly pp. 431 — 446; Idem, Lllliralure orale-ltttirature icrlte, ln “Cahlers roum. 6t. lit.”, 1977, No. 1, p. 53—61; łon Tal o? La relation o ral-ćcrtloral dans 1’ćtude dn folklore Roumaln, “Cahlers roum. ćt. lit”, 1977, No. 1, pp. 41-52.

This knowledge derives from a long traditlon or from a gradual acceptance In the course of time — under strict prlnciplcs of selection — of new teachings, written or not.

Alexandru Dulu, Cultura romini ln ctoiltza(la europeani moderni, Bucureętl, 1978; Idem, Modele, tmaglnl, prloeliftl, Cluj-Napoca, 1979.

⁸ Ale>:. Nicuiescu, Indtoidualltalea limblt romine Inlre Itmblle romantce, vol. I, 1965; vol. II, Bucure?ti, 1978 (includlng also the history of the problem).

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