Yugoslav Literature

I

Introduction

Yugoslav Literature, literature in the languages of former Yugoslavia—Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian—as well as in the languages of some resident minorities, including Albanian, Hungarian, and Italian. These, however, are usually considered as belonging to their respective ethnic traditions. Serbian and Croatian literatures are written in what is basically the same language, although Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet and Croats the Latin alphabet. Slovenian is written in a related language in the Latin script, and Macedonian in still another related language, in Cyrillic.

II

Origins

The earliest South Slavic literary texts are Church documents translated by Macedonians and Slovenes from Greek into Old Church Slavic; they date from the 9th century. Later in the Middle Ages, the Serbs developed a rich literature consisting of biographies of saints, kings, and Church dignitaries; chronicles; and translations from Byzantine Greek literature. When Serbia was conquered by the Turks in the 15th century, literary activity waned. Croatian medieval literature consists of Church writings, histories, legal codes, and some poetry. The Slovenes and Macedonians, under foreign oppression, were silenced in this era.

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Renaissance Literature

Under the influence of the Italian Renaissance, Croatian literature blossomed in the 16th and 17th centuries in the free republic of Dubrovnik. Among the significant writers were the essayist and poet Marko Marulić the dramatist Marin Držić, whose comedy Dundo Maroje (1550, Uncle Maroje) is still performed; and Ivan Gundulić, whose greatest works are the pastoral play Dubravka (1628) and the epic poem Osman (1626; pub. 1826), about the struggle of the Poles against the Turks. With the decline of Dubrovnik, literary activity declined. During the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century the Slovenes resumed literary productivity under the leadership of Primož Trubar, creator of the Slovene literary language and orthography. At the same time, the Serbs produced epic poems and other folk literature of great artistry and beauty.

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18th- and 19th-Century Movements

In the 18th century cultural activity flourished in almost all South Slavic lands, leading to the rebirth of national identity, especially in the part of Austria-Hungary called Vojvodina, where thousands of Serbs, fleeing the Turks, had migrated. The enlightened rule of the Austro-Hungarian monarchs Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II allowed the Serbs to revive their culture based on the Eastern Orthodox faith and folk poetry. A former monk, Dositej Obradović, who in his travels in Europe had acquired faith in rationalism, awakened the national spirit and spurred cultural activity by his writings, notably his autobiography, The Life and Adventures of Dimitrije Obradović (1783; trans. 1953).

In the 19th century, Vuk Karadžić, a linguist and folklorist, devised a spelling reform, formulated the first Serbian grammar, and published folk poems and tales he had collected among the peasantry. The Serbian vernacular replaced the hybrid language used primarily by the Church and by the educated few. This revolutionary linguistic change was carried out under the influence of the nationalistic spirit spreading throughout Europe at that time; it marked the beginning of modern Serbian literature. One of the most notable writers of this period was the Montenegrin prince and bishop Petar Petrović Njegoš; his masterpiece is a Montenegrin nationalist epic drama, The Mountain Wreath (1847). In Croatia, the publisher Ljudevit Gaj led the Illyrian movement (1835-1848), dedicated to Croatian political and cultural independence. Support came from the leading writers, among them the poet Ivan Mažuranić, author of the epic The Death of Smail-Aga Čengić (1846; trans. 1925). France Prešeren, the Slovene author of The Wreath of Sonnets (1834), spearheaded the Romantic movement in Slovenia.

In the second half of the 19th century, under the influence of Russian realism and other foreign literatures, Serbian, Croatian, and Slovene writers began to depict the life of their regions realistically, combining attention to detail with social criticism.

In the late 19th century all South Slavic literatures developed modernistic tendencies, particularly under French influence. This period, called Moderna, was particularly manifested in lyric poetry, in which the older themes of patriotism and love were replaced by more subjective, complex themes and modes of expression.