"The subject of this book is the discussion of four nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century novellas written by representative Romanian writers of the period: Ioan Slavici, Ioan Luca Caragiale, Liviu Rebreanu, and Mkhail Sadoveanu. In addition to these four texts, I also examine an anonymous Romanian ballad that registers an earlier and treacherous testimony to the complex combination of love and sacrifices arond which I crystallize [sic] a theory of politics and sexuality"--Page 1 of Introduction.