Prace komisji nauk.pdf - Instytut Filologii Angielskiej Uniwersytetu ...

Trannsylvania (see Ioan Slavici with his The Lucky Mill), in Wallachia (see, for
example, I. L. Caragiale where the inn is wrapped up in mystery in the short
story entitled At Manjoală’s Inn), while the region of Moldavia has its own
famous inn, the perfect place for travelling, revelling and telling stories:
Ancuta’s Inn 19 –, the inn which gives the title of a volume written by Mihail
Sadoveanu.
Some documents from the XVIII th century testify to the inn’s existence
(www.hanu-ancutei.ro) which is now situated on the side of one of the major
European roads that runs through Romania (E85) and has become popular as a
result of Mihail Sadoveanu’s text – AncuŃa’s Inn – which was created in 1928.
This inn, always compared to a fortress, is depicted for the reader by the
narrator, by some of the characters and even by the inn-keeper herself, AncuŃa.
Each of the descriptions gives the reader a unique feeling, one of safeness; it is
an ideal place where travellers find shelter for a night or two and leave behind
all their worries. The main criterion in defining terms such as “fixed
house/shelter” as opposed to the concept of “unsuitable or temporary house”
depends on “the time of using/dwelling in the place” (Bidu-Vrânceanu 2005:
162). Open space, as a space of uncomfortable, olden time travelling, presented
by the author, has been replaced by the closed space of the inn (a temporary
shelter for those who travel), with its always warm welcoming atmosphere.
From the very first lines one realizes that “AncuŃa’s Inn was not an inn
but a fortress. Surrounded by thick walls here and everywhere and gates overlaid
with metal as I have never seen before in my life. So big and safe it was that
people, animals and carts could find shelter in there, a place where the petty
thieves had not put foot in…” (Voda` s Mare p. 4). It is the old Leonte, the star
19 AncuŃa`s Inn, published in 1928, opened the series of Sadoveanu’s masterpieces. The
volume, made out of nine short-stories: Vodă’s Mare, Haralambie, The Dragon, The
Fountain between the Poplars, The Other AncuŃa, The County of the Poor, Lipscan, the
Pedlar, The Poor Blindman, The Story of Zaharia, The Well Digger, stories which are
considered to be parts of a great novel, written at different periods of time.
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