ABSTRACT
This essay examines the pursuit of Shakespeare studies at the time of the harshest political and ideological oppression in Romania’s history, focusing on strategies of negotiating with institutions of power and the dominant discourse of Socialist Realism. The first part of the essay looks at the negotiations employed by the prestigious scholar Tudor Vianu in the Stalinist fifties, and outlines the independent positions and areas of research that his strategy was intended to safeguard. The essay further provides a brief discussion of the younger critics’ attempts to carry on Vianu’s line of indirect opposition at the time of the relative political thaw of 1957-58. The second half of this essay analyzes the 1964 anthology of Shakespeare criticism, created under Vianu’s direction and produced for the celebrations of Shakespeare’s quarter-centenary in Romania.
