Notes on the Origin of Several Textemes in the Work of I.L. Caragiale

This article demonstrates that some of the textemes of Romanian playwright I.L. Caragiale, which later became famous throughout the entire Romanian ethnolinguistic community, are in fact borrowed from older Romanian texts, which appeared in the mid-19th century. My analysis focuses on three textemes from Caragiale’s comedies (“the family is the small homeland, as the homeland is the large family”, “a stormy night” and “have a little patience”), identifying their origins in the writings of C. D. Aricescu, Ioan M. Bujoreanu and I. Heliade-Rădulescu. My study concludes that Caragiale’s plays have a deeply intertextual structure.