Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION: THE ARGUMENT

Motivations, Conceptual Background

Why a Self-image?

Why the Transylvanian Romanians?

Why the Beginning of the Modern Era?

Sources and Methods

Notes

I. SELF-IMAGE AND IMAGES CONSTRUCTED BY OTHERS

Reflection on One’s Own Condition as a Reaction to Images Constructed by Others

Should the Romanians Reply to Calumnies Uttered by Others?

The Reasons for the Slander

The Romanians, Object of Envy for Foreigners

Perpetually Wronged, Deserted, Forgotten and Betrayed

The Universal Conspiracy against the Romanians              

The Romanians as the Laughing-stock of Others…

...but They Will Show the Others (in the Long Run)

Notions of Comparative Imagology among the Transylvanian Romanians of a Hundred and Fifty Years Ago

A More Refined Attitude to the Images Constructed by Others

Notes

II. NEGATIVE DIMENSION OF THE SELF-IMAGE

The Romanians as Self-denigrators: Should They Denigrate

Themselves as Well or Not?

Cultural Backwardness

The Romanians as Occupying the Lowest Place

The Romanians Compared to the Gypsies

The Romanians compared to the Jews

Moral and Behavioural “Flaws” Due to the Nation’s “Specificity”

Lack of Zeal for the National Cause

Keeping to the (Bad) Old Ways: Romanian Hostility towards Progress

“Forms without Substance”: The Moral Corruption of the Romanians by Modern Civilisation

The Unhappy Lot of the Romanians

Notes

III.IN BETWEEN THE GOOD AND THE BAD

Idle or Diligent?

“Idle”

“Diligent”

Resistance to Denationalisation--Open towards Assimilation or Resistant to It?

The Capacity for Ethnic–Racial Resistance

The Mixed Marriage as a Means of Altering Ethnic Purity               

Denationalisation: Stigmatising the Élites as Promoters of Assimilation

The Shame of Being a Romanian               

Notes

IV.THE HISTORICAL DIMENSION OF THE POSITIVE SELF-IMAGE

Generalities

No Different from Others: The Romanians’ Growing Trust in Their Own Powers   

The Compensatory Function of History

Latin Origins

Saviours of Christian Europe in the Middle Ages

Notes

V.THE POSITIVE SELF-IMAGE: BASICS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY

Moral and Behavioural “Qualities”: An Ethnic-Psychological Profile.

The Number and Spreading of the Romanians

The “Spreading” of the Romanians: The Need to Enlarge the Sphere of National Identity

The Number of Romanians: “We Are Many”; “We Are the Most Numerous”

The Number of Romanians: The Whirligig of Figures

Language and Alphabet

The Ideological Reconstruction of the Language

The Alphabet

Church and Religion

Generalities: Preliminaries and Context

Representations of the Relationship between Church and Nationality

The Venerable Age and Purity of Romanian Christianity as Features of National Identity

The Four Identity-related Formulas of Romanian Pluri-confessionalism

The Greek Catholic Formula

The Orthodox ....