Hașdeu, the Ironic Narrator. “Duduca Mamuca” - Space of Breaking Conventions

Abstract

The short story Duduca Mamuca, written by B. P. Hașdeu, stands out for its provocative and nonconformist character, both stylistically and ideologically. The text is notable for an unusual narrative freedom for Romanian literature from the mid-19th century, subverting the conventions of the era through a combination of humor, irony and parody. This freedom of construction is not arbitrary, but serves as an acid critique of emerging bourgeois values, class relations and social conveniences. Hașdeu deliberately loads the text with elements of theatricality, distorting reality to amplify the absurdity of situations and the superficiality of human relationships. The importance of the short story lies precisely in its ability to destabilize literary and moral boundaries, through an ambiguous but deeply ironic discourse, which reflects both the identity crisis of the characters and the confusion of an entire era in search of a balance between modernity and tradition. The present study proposes a critical reading of the text not only as social satire, but also as a lucid intervention on narrative mechanisms, revealing the modernity of Hasdei's vision. In the absence of an explicit moral, Duduca Mamuca forces the reader to navigate through tensions of meaning and fractures of logic, making ambiguity an aesthetic strategy and a means of cultural contestation.