Transcendence becomes possible again with the advent of studies on the subconscious. In Renaissance drama, exemplified by Lope de Vega, the place of God in whose eye man is playing his part in the cosmic script is taken by the creative artist, while the eighteenth century relativizes the notion of divinity which becomes a concept, a human construct. The stages covered along this timespan are classified in a way that proves disciplinary culture. The deconstruction of this paradigm has taken centuries of real history. The medieval, theocratic vision of the history of humanity cast in the mould of biblical history from the Genesis to the Last Judgment is identified in Valeriu Anania’s plays. Looked at in this perspective, the succession of epistemic matrices from the early Middle Ages to the present day corresponds to three almost contemporary paradigms. Unlike classical historical theatre, understood as a succession of paradigms, New History studies the past as a succession of styles, the double past/ present perspective relativizing their distance in time.

The studies of representation seemed to come in handy, especially in the manner of the cultural materialism from Birmingham represented by Edward Hall, to which was added Foucault’s and Vito Pandolfi’s New Historicism, out of whose combination rose the critical theory known as cultural studies. In accordance with current practice, Cristina Elena Safta combines several methods. Although the analysis goes down to the lexical and etymological level of the texts, the assumption of a methodology and its consistent application remains an imperative considered throughout the book. It rarely happens that an author’s first book, even when based on a doctoral thesis, should display both multiple hermeneutic skills and the difficult enterprise of theorizing and conceptualizing the object of investigation, while also covering previous exegetic exercises both with a critical eye and an heir’s deference to intellectual legacy.

Teatru II by Valeriu Anania