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Junimea was a literary society founded in Iași in 1863, through the initiative of several foreign-educated personalities led by Titu Maiorescu, Petre P. Carp, Vasile Pogor, Theodor Rosetti and Iacob Negruzzi. The foremost personality and mentor of the society was Maiorescu, who, through the means of scientific papers and essays, helped establish the basis of the modern Romanian culture. Junimea was the most influential intellectual and political association from Romania in the 19th century.
It is notable that four of the founders were part of the Romanian elite, the boyar class (Theodor Rosetti was the brother-in-law of Domnitor Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Carp and Pogor were sons of boyars, and Iacob Negruzzi was the son of Costache Negruzzi), while Titu Maiorescu was the only one born in a family of city elite, his father Ioan Maiorescu having been a professor at the National College in Craiova and a representative of the Wallachian government to the Frankfurt Parliament during the 1848 Wallachian Revolution.
In 1867 Junimea started publishing its own literary review, Convorbiri Literare. It was to become one of the most important publications in the history of Romanian literature and added a new, modern vision to the whole Romanian culture.
Between 1874 and 1885, when the society was frequented by the Romanian literature classics – Mihai Eminescu, Ion Creangă, Ion Luca Caragiale, Ioan Slavici – and many other important cultural personalities, it occupied the central spot of cultural life in Romania.
Moreover, Maiorescu argued that Romania only had an appearance of a complex modern society, and in fact harbored only two social classes: peasants, which comprised up to 90% of Romanians, and the . He denied the existence of a Romanian bourgeoisie, and presented Romanian society as one still fundamentally Patriarchy. The National Liberal Party (founded in 1875) was dubbed as useless since it had no class to represent. Also, socialism was thought to be the product of an advanced society in Western Europe, and argued to have yet no reason of existence in Romania, where the proletariat made up a small part of the population – Junimea saw socialism in the context of Romania as an "exotic plant", and Maiorescu engaged in a polemic with Marxism thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea.
While this criticism was indeed similar to Conservatism, Junimea's purposes were actually connected with gradual modernization that was meant to lead to a Romanian culture and society able to sustain a dialogue with their European counterparts. Unlike the mainstream Conservative Party, which sought to best represent landowners, the politically active Junimists opposed excessive reliance on agriculture, and could even champion a peasant ethos. Maiorescu wrote:
The society also encouraged an accurate use of the Romanian language, and Maiorescu repeatedly argued for a common version of the rendition of words in Romanian, favoring a phonetic transcription over the several versions in circulation after the discarding of the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. Maiorescu entered a polemic with the main advocates of a spelling that was reflecting pure Latin etymology rather than the spoken language, the group around August Treboniu Laurian:
At the same time, Maiorescu exercised influence through his attack on what he viewed as excessive innovative trends in writing and speaking Romanian:
Accordingly, Junimea heavily criticized Romanian Romantic nationalism for condoning excesses (especially in the problematic theses connected to the origin of Romanians). In the words of Maiorescu:
Using the same logic, Junimea (and especially Carp) entered a polemic with the National-Liberal historian Bogdan Petriceicu-Hasdeu over the latter's version of Dacian Protochronism.
The society encouraged a move towards in the writing of history, as well as intensified research; Maiorescu, who served as Minister of Education in several late-19th century cabinets, supported the creation of new opportunities in the field (including the granting of scholarships, especially in areas that had previously been neglected – amounting to the creation of one of the most influential Romanian generation of historians, that of Nicolae Iorga, Dimitrie Onciul, and Ioan Bogdan).
Although Junimea never imposed a single view on the matter, some of its prominent figures (Maiorescu, Carp, and Junimea associate Ion Luca Caragiale) notoriously opposed the prevalent anti-Jewish sentiment of the political establishment (while the initially Junimist intellectuals A. C. Cuza, A. D. Xenopol, and Ioan Slavici became well-known Antisemitism).
This roughly coincided with the partial transformation of prominent Junimists into politicians, after leaders such as Maiorescu and Carp joined the Conservative Party. Initially a separate wing with a moderately conservative political agenda (and, as the Partidul Constituţional, "Constitutional Party", an independent political group between 1891 and 1907), Junimea representatives moved to the Party's forefront in the first years of the 20th century – both Carp and Maiorescu led the Conservatives in the 1910s.
Its cultural interests moved to historical research, philosophy (the theory of Positivism), as well as the two greatest political problems – the peasant question ( see the 1907 Romanian Peasants' Revolt), and the issue of ethnic Romanians in Transylvania (a region which was part of Austria-Hungary). It ceased to exist around 1916, after becoming engulfed in the conflict over Romania's participation in World War I; leading Junimists (Carp first and foremost) had supported continuing Romania's alliance with the Central Powers, and clashed over the issue with pro-French and anti-Austrian politicians.
The officially sanctioned criticism of Junimea during the Socialist Republic of Romania found its voice with George Călinescu, in his late work, the Communist-inspired Compendium of his earlier Istoria literaturii române ("The History of Romanian Literature"). While arguing that Junimea had created a bridge between peasants and boyars, Călinescu criticised Maiorescu's strict commitment to art for art's sake and the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer, as signs of rigidity.Călinescu, Compendiu, XII. Titu Maiorescu He downplayed Junimea's literature, arguing that many Junimists had not reached their own goals (for example, he rejected Carp's criticism of Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu and others as " little and unprofessional"),Călinescu, Compendiu, XII. Filologi, istorici, filozofi but looked favorably upon the major figures connected with the society (Mihai Eminescu, Caragiale, Creangă etc.) and secondary Junimists such as the Materialism philosopher Vasile Conta.
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