1. Ph.D. Anca-Narcisa Leizeriuc Faculty of Letters “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi

2. This paper seeks to determine: * Whether the postmodern phenomenon, in generally, appears as a continuation of modernity or as a crash of level. * How the epistemic changes affect the human being as it can be seen in literature. * If the postmodernism has its legitimacy in the Romanian space since the third wave of post- industrial civilization is absent here.

3. * Starting from postmodern theorists studies (Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucauld, Alvin Toffler) there were synthesized the epistemic changes. * An applied study on the cultural dimension of existence, namely the Romanian literature, highlights how postmodernism appear in this space.

4. * Is a cultural and social phenomenon, generated by the epistemic depth categories (Foucauld, 1992). * The third wave of the post-industrial civilization affects the “infosphere” level (Toffler, 1983). * The new epistemic model of knowledge is the pluralism (with his relativism and fragmentary ) and refuses any discourse of legitimacy.

5. * The text is seen as a fragment of a universal text. * The literature uses the media, the internet, and the virtual book; therefore the art infuses in the social body and serves the common taste. * The function of art is reconsidered: it is no longer the education, but only the textual pleasure.

6. * The substance and the main subject of the literary creation are the meaningless of existence and the vacuum. * Without rejecting the tradition, the postmodernism is accepting a peaceful coexistence with the tradition, treated with irony or a parody spirit.

7. * The death of art or its silence means in postmodern literature: (a) the negative echo of language, autodestructive, nihilist; (b) its positive stillness, self-transcendent, sacramental, plenary (Hassan, 1971).

8. * There is no metaphysical truth but a multitude of points of view. * As a prisoner of the reality, the human being has no longer the possibility to dream at his ideals or to communicate with the transcendent.

9. * The existentialism and the nihilism are leading to the alienation of being seen as "a floating entity” (C ă rt ă rescu, 1999). * A show of anatomical metaphors and visceral fantasy, where the eye is the essential organ takes place.

10. * The split between postmodernism and modernism seems to be a literary continuity. * The new humanism of postmodernism captures human alienation, the anonymous individuals depending on the real world and even the robotization of human being. * The Romanian literary postmodernism has emerged not as a phenomenon of imitation in relation to Anglo- American postmodernism, but as an organic evolution of Romanian Literature.

11. * Barthes, Roland, Pl ă cerea textului, traducere de Marian Papahagi, postfa ă de Ion Pop, Editura Echinox, Cluj, 1994. * B ă d ă r ă u, Gheorghe, Postmodernismul românesc, Institutul European, Bucureşti, 2007. * C ă linescu, Matei, Cinci feţe ale modernit ă ţii. Modernism, avangard ă, decadenţ ă, kitsch, postmodernism, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2005. * C ă rt ă rescu, Mircea, Postmodernismul românesc, Editura Humanitas, Bucureşti, 1999. * Diaconu, Mircea, Poezia posmodern ă, Editura Aula, Braov, 2002. * Foucault, Michel, in Sean Burke, The Death and Return of Author. Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida, Edinburg University Press, Edinburg, 1992.

12. * Hassan, Ihab, „POSTmodernISM”, The postmodern Turn. Essay in Postmodern Theory and Culture, Ohio State Univ. Press, 1987. * Hassan, Ihab, The dismemberment of Orpheus. Toward a postmodern literature, Oxford University Press, New York, 1971. * Kristeva, Julia, Problèmes de la structuration du texte, în Tel quel. Théorie d’ensemble, Seuil, Paris, 1968. * Lyotard, Jean-François, Condiţia postmodern ă. Raport asupra cunoaşterii, Editura Babel, Bucureşti, 1993. * Manolescu, Nicolae, Faruri, vitrine, fotografii, Poeme de amor, Totul, Levantul, în Literatura român ă postbelic ă, Editura Aula, Braşov, 2001. * Muşina, Alexandru, Sinapse, Editura Aula, Braşov, 2001. * Petrescu, Liviu, Poetica postmodernismului, Editura Paralela 45, Piteşti, 1998. * Toffler, Alvin, Al treilea val, Editura Politic ă, Bucureti, 1983. * Vattimo, Gianni, Sfârşitul modernit ă ţii, Editura Pontica, Constana, 1993.