Eugen Lovinescu (; 31 October 1881 – 16 July 1943) was a Romanian modernist literary historian, literary critic, academic, and novelist, who in 1919 established the Sburătorul literary club. He was the father of Monica Lovinescu, and the uncle of , , and Anton Holban. He was elected to the Romanian Academy posthumously, in 1991. Biography Born in Fălticeni, he was a graduate of the Boarding High School in Iași and of the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Classical Languages, and briefly worked as a high school teacher of Latin in Ploiești. He made his literary debut in the literary supplement of Adevărul, and became permanently featured in the periodical Epoca, as the author of pieces on Sămănătorul writers (such as Mihail Sadoveanu, Ion Agârbiceanu, and Octavian Goga). At the time, Lovinescu was already taking a stand which would lead to the prolonged disputes with Nicolae Iorga and Garabet Ibrăileanu. He obtained his doctorate in Paris for his work on Jean-Jacques Weiss, and an additional history on the accounts 19th century French travelers gave of Greece. Both were praised by Émile Faguet. In 1936, his candidacy for acceptance into the Romanian Academy was refused. Lovinescu was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy. He died in 1943 in Bucharest and was buried in the family crypt at the Grădini Cemetery in Fălticeni. Views Building on the legacy of Titu Maiorescu, Lovinescu aimed to show that both the author and critic are never cut out from their social and cultural environments. He opposed Garabet Ibrăileanu's theory of selection (the compromise between individual genius and social requirement), proposing instead the idea that creation and demand occupy the very same moment in time. Lovinescu's analysis was backed by the views of Faguet, Jules Lemaître, as well as Gabriel Tarde's notion of a group mind; it also adhered to the esthetical tenets of Impressionism. The main advocate of Modernism, Lovinescu rejected the preoccupation of Poporanism and the Sămănătorul group had with rural themes, arguing in favour of novels with an urban setting. His Sburătorul published works by a new generation of writers, realists to symbolists to early avant-garde: Camil Petrescu, Ion Barbu, Tudor Vianu, Liviu Rebreanu, Benjamin Fondane, Ilarie Voronca, Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu, and many others. The polemic with Sămănătorul extended over decades: Lovinescu is also remembered for his rejection of Nicolae Iorga's thesis on the origin of the Romanian reignant Princes as an institution in