Ion Budai-Deleanu | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | January 6, 1760 Cigmău |
| Died | August 24, 1820 (aged 60) Lemberg, Austrian Empire |
| Occupation | Historian, poet, scholar, philologist |
| Nationality | Romanian |
| Education | University of Vienna |
| Genre | Epic poem |
| Literary movement | Humanism |
| Parents | Solomon Budai |
Ion Budai-Deleanu (January 6, 1760 – August 24, 1820)[1] was a Romanian scholar, philologist, historian, poet, and a representative of the Transylvanian School.
He was born in Csigmó (today Cigmău), a village in the town of Algyógy (today Geoagiu, Hunedoara County), located in the western part of Transylvania.[2] Budai-Deleanu studied at the College of Saint Barbara in Vienna.[1] After completing his doctorate at the University of Erlau, he settled in Lemberg (now Lviv in Ukraine).[3] He finished an epic poem, entitled Țiganiada ("Gypsy Epic"), about a band of gypsies that fought alongside the army of Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler of Wallachia.[1]
He was one of the first proponents of the idea of the unification of the lands that now form Romania.[4] He proposed that the union should be achieved under the rule of the Habsburgs, through the annexation of Wallachia and Moldavia into the Grand Principality of Transylvania.[5]
According to Budai-Deleanu, the Dacians did not have a role in the ethnogenesis of the Romanian people.[6] He thought that the Dacians were the ancestors of the Poles.[6]
He promoted the purification of the Romanian language from loanwords, proposing that only borrowings from Italian and French should be permitted.[7] He also strove for the replacement of the Cyrillic script with the Latin alphabet.[7]
Budai-Deleanu died in Lemberg in 1820, aged 60.
Streets în Arad, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Oradea, Sibiu, and Timișoara are named after him.
