Academia Română în preocupările presei transilvănene din sec. al XIX-lea

Abstract

Romanian cultural figures from the 19th century campaigned in unison for the unity of the language as a sine qua non condition for achieving the ideal of national unity. In their conception, the history of the nation is equivalent to the history of the language, the linguistic instrument being assigned an eminently political function, so that the destiny of the nation is identified with that of the language (David 1980, 13). The press constituted the terrain in which discussions took place between scholars of the time animated by the valorization of the culture of the language in conditioning the general state of the nation: "the language of a nation reworks upon its spirit" (Bariț 1842, 8). One of the topics presented in publications from Transylvania and beyond was the establishment of a higher court, society or academy, to decide on language matters.