Romanian literature is the entirety of literature written by Romanian authors, although the term may also be used to refer to all literature written in the Romanian language or by any authors native to Romania.
Ileana Cosânzeana is a figure in Romanian mythology. She is represented as a beautiful good-natured princess or daughter of an Emperor, or described as a fairy with immense powers.
Făt-Frumos is a knight hero in Romanian folklore, usually present in fairy tales.
Ioan Slavici was a Romanian writer and journalist from Austria-Hungary, later Romania.
Ion Creangă was a Moldavian, later Romanian writer, raconteur and schoolteacher. A main figure in 19th-century Romanian literature, he is best known for his Childhood Memories volume, his novellas and short stories, and his many anecdotes. Creangă's main contribution to fantasy and children's literature includes narratives structured around eponymous protagonists, as well as fairy tales indebted to conventional forms. Widely seen as masterpieces of the Romanian language and local humor, his writings occupy the middle ground between a collection of folkloric sources and an original contribution to a literary realism of rural inspiration. They are accompanied by a set of contributions to erotic literature, collectively known as his "corrosives".
Luminița Gheorghiu was a Romanian film and stage actress and artistic performer in East Central Europe. She achieved international recognition for her roles in The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2006) and Child's Pose (2013). Gheorghiu's roles were mostly in Romanian and French, including that in Code Unknown with Juliette Binoche.
Nicolae Filimon was a Wallachian Romanian novelist and short-story writer, remembered as the author of the first Realist novel in Romanian literature, Ciocoii vechi şi noi, which was centered on the self-seeking figure Dinu Păturică. He was also a noted travel writer, folklorist, musician, and the first musical critic in his country.
Petre Ispirescu was a Romanian editor, folklorist, printer, and publicist. He is best known for his work as a gatherer of Romanian folk tales, recounting them with a remarkable talent.
Legende sau basmele românilor is a collection, in several volumes, of Romanian folktales, first published in 1872 by Petre Ispirescu.
Făt-Frumos with the Golden Hair or The Foundling Prince is a Romanian fairy tale collected by Petre Ispirescu in Legende sau basmele românilor.
The folklore of Romania is the collection of traditions of the Romanians. A feature of Romanian culture is the special relationship between folklore and the learned culture, determined by two factors. First, the rural character of the Romanian communities resulted in an exceptionally vital and creative traditional culture. Folk creations were the main literary genre until the 18th century. They were both a source of inspiration for cultivated creators and a structural model. Second, for a long time learned culture was governed by official and social commands and developed around courts of princes and boyars, as well as in monasteries.
"The Goat and Her Three Kids" or "The Goat with Three Kids" is an 1875 short story, fable and fairy tale by Romanian author Ion Creangă. Figuratively illustrating for the notions of motherly love and childish disobedience, it recounts how a family of goats is ravaged by the Big Bad Wolf, allowed inside the secured home by the oldest, most ill-behaved and least prudent of the kids. The only one of the children to survive is the youngest and most obedient, who then helps his mother plan her revenge on the predator, leading to a dénouement in which the wolf is tricked, burned alive and stoned to death.
I. Dragoslav or Ion Dragoslav, pen names of Ion V. Ivaciuc or Ion Sumanariu Ivanciuc, was a Romanian writer. His presence on the local literary scene meant successive affiliations with various competing venues: having debuted with the traditionalist and nationalist magazine Sămănătorul, he later connected the eclectically conservative Convorbiri Critice group of Mihail Dragomirescu with the Romanian Symbolist movement leaders Alexandru Macedonski and Ion Minulescu, before moving close to the modernist trend of Eugen Lovinescu and his Sburătorul.
Șerban Nicolae Foarță is a contemporary Romanian writer. A translator, essayist, playwright, prose writer and even illustrator, he is most widely known for his poetry books.
Vlad Ioviţă was a film director from Moldova also known as a writer and publicist.
Păcală is a fictional character in Romanian folklore, literature and humor. Primarily associated with Transylvania and Oltenia, he is depicted as a native of Vaideeni, located in an area of contact between those two regions. An irreverent young man, seemingly a peasant, he reserves contempt and irony for the village authorities, but often plays the fool, or displays an erratic and criminal behavior that scholars attribute to the eclecticism of sources weaved into the narrative. Păcală seems to be at least partly modeled on other characters in European folklore, in particular Giufà and Till Eulenspiegel. He may therefore be borrowed from Western chapbooks, with scholar Traian Bratu hypothesizing that Romanians were introduced to the Eulenspiegel anecdotes by their prolonged contact with the Transylvanian Saxons. The stories were then adapted and, in at least some cases, substantially modified, for instance by the addition of a native mythological layer, and by the appearance of a sidekick, the more slow-witted Tândală.
Adolf Edmund George de Herz, commonly shortened to A. de Herz, also rendered as Hertz and Herț, was a Romanian playwright and literary journalist, also active as a poet, short story author, and stage actor. He was the scion of an upper-class assimilated Jewish family, with its roots in Austria-Hungary. His grandfather, Adolf Sr, was a controversial banker and venture capitalist, while his father, Edgar von Herz, was noted as a translator of Romanian literature. Adolf had a privileged childhood and debuted as a poet while still in high school, producing the lyrics to a hit romance. In his early work for the stage, Herz was a traditionalist inspired by Alexandru Davila and the Sămănătorul school, but later veered toward neoclassical literature and aestheticism. His "salon comedies", staged by the National Theater Bucharest, borrowed from various authors, including Roberto Bracco, Henri Lavedan, and Haralamb Lecca, peaking in popularity in 1913, with Păianjenul. By the start of World War I, Herz was also a writer of revues.
Gheorghe Cardaș was a Romanian literary historian.
"The Fairy Aurora" is a fairy tale written by Ioan Slavici and published in June 1872. Mihai Eminescu urged him to write his first story, which was read at Junimea in two sessions and was published in the magazine Convorbiri Literare.
