L'Athenée Palace, lieu d'aventure historique: la manipulation politique d'un stéréotype littéraire

Abstract

The article tries to put into a literary perspective one of the most criticized political allegations launched in Romania in the past years, by focusing on a significant detail of the "plot": the place. Looking at it through the lens of several space-oriented sociological, anthropological and literary approaches (Foucault, Augé), among which the relatively newly emerged geocriticism (Westphal), the present approach attempts not only to account for the notoriety of one of the most famous European Grand Hotels at the beginning of the 20th century (Athénée Palace in Bucharest), but also for the pragmatic relevance of literary theory in decoding the nowadays "political fiction".