MAGIC REALISM AND THE POLITICS OF NARRATIVE: HISTORICAL POSTMODERNISM IN THE CONTEMPORARY SERBIAN NOVEL

• Authors: Gvozden Vladimir
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper critically examines three extremely successful examples of historical postmodernism in contemporary Serbian literature: Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars (1984), Radoslav Petković’s Destiny, Annotated (1993) and Goran Petrović’s The Siege of the Church of Holy Salvation (1997). All three novels take historical events as the basis of an archaeological narrative, but they also question the notion of history which itself is, of course, historical and political. Therefore, we have to (re)construct the context of the 1990s when nationalism needed a new “imagined community” ready to deal with the challenges of the disintegration of Yugoslavia, post communism and capitalism. Thus it seems that these novels invite magic realism as a possible way out from history, or even better, a way into a “new” history.

Keywords

EN

MAGIC REALISM; SERBIAN LITERATURE; ALLEGORY; HISTORIOGRAPHY; POSTMODERNISM

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 64 – 75

Contributors

author

Gvozden Vladimir

• Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Zorana Đinđića 2, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia