context of early Romanian literature, where Romanticism and delayed Classicism coexisted, Asachi, like Grigore Alexandrescu, George Baronzi and others, tended to side with the latter, at a time when his counterpart in Bucharest, Ion Heliade Rădulescu, bridged the gap between the two schools. The literary critic Garabet Ibrăileanu concluded that Asachi's literature signified a transition between a Classicist stage exemplified by Costache Conachi and younger Romantics such as Vasile Alecsandri and Dimitrie Bolintineanu (he also concluded that the casual comparisons made between Heliade Rădulescu and Asachi had failed to note that the former was not a conservative). Gheorghe Asachi recommended his students to study Italian literature, and would frown upon models inspired by French literature. His creation comprised poems, the first of which were written in Italian, as well as vast array of short stories and novellas, through which Asachi attempted to create a legendary history partly mirroring Romanian mythology. The major influences on his work were Renaissance authors such as Petrarch, Ludovico Ariosto, and Torquato Tasso, but he also accommodated more modern influences, such as Salvator Rosa, Thomas Gray, Gottfried August Bürger, Vasily Zhukovsky, Lord Byron and Friedrich Schiller. Thus, Asachi created himself a fictional location, called Dochia — a reference to both Dacia and the myth of Baba Dochia, which houses the Ceahlău Massif under the name of Pion. Asachi was also the first person to mention Baba Dochia in connection to the Roman Emperor Trajan and the Dacian Wars — the vague and unprecedented references make it likely that he actually invented the original story as well. References to this universe are also present in an eponymous novella about Dragoş, the first Prince of Moldavia, which partly drew on old chronicles, and partly displayed Asachi's own fictional devices. The story centers on Harboe, a chivalrous Tatar ruler who resides in the Cumanian town of Romidava, who falls in love with Branda, the daughter of a Moesian lord and would-be wife of Dragoş. Dochia's hidden altar, referred to as "a simulacrum", is guarded by a Vestal-like priestess and a deer hind. Asachi's other prose works on historical subjects take similar liberties with their subjects (they notably describe large Gothic monuments and tournaments in medieval Moldavia, as well as improbable details from the lives of 14th–16th century Princes Bogdan I, Stephen the Great, and Petru Rareş). Asachi's works also include romanticized accounts of a journey made by the Cossack