History, Identity and Diversity in Serbian Women's Writing

Abstract

In the first part of this article the author explores definitions of identity and diversity, as well as of history and writing. In the second part, the problematic relationship between history and literature is presented from the perspective of literary theory. In the third part, several examples are cited in order to demonstrate that texts written by Serbian women writers have presented diverging views on historical events and have also been open to historical interpretations which demand diverse points of view.

Notes

James Joyce (1979) Ulysses (London: Penguin), p. 17.

Isidora Sekulić (1996) Njegošu knjiga duboke odanosti (Podgorica: Oktoih), p. 100 (originally published in 1951).

Hayden White (1975) Metahistory: the historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press) (originally published in 1973).

Ibid., p. ix.

See, ibid., p. 7.

Hayden White (1999) Figural Realism: studies in the mimesis effect (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press).

Ibid., p. 4.

Ibid., p. 9.

Ibid., p. 24.

Ibid., p. 82.

Ibid., p. 68.

Milica Stojadinović-Srpkinja (1985) U Fruškoj gori 1854 (Beograd: Prosveta).

Jelena Dimitrijević (1901) Đul-Marikina prikažnja (Beograd: Državna štamparija Kraljevine Srbije).

Danica Marković (1928). Trenuci i raspoloženja (Beograd: Srpska književna zadruga). All translations into English are by Biljana Dojčinović-Nešić.

Ibid.

Danica Marković (2003) Doziv nečastivog in Kupačica i zmija (Čačak: Gradska biblioteka ‘Vladislav Petković Dis’), p. 157.

Ibid.

Miloš Blagojević (1989) Srbija u doba Nemanjića, od kneževine do carstva: 1168–1371; ilustrovana hronika (Beograd: TRZ Vajat, IRO Beograd), p. 106.

Mirjana Mitrović (1999) Sveto stado (Beograd: Stubovi kulture), p. 23.

Ibid., p. 24.

Erica Jong (1978) Fear of Flying (London: Granada Publishing).

Biljana Jovanović (2006) Pada Avala (Beograd: Narodna knjiga) (originally published in 1978).

As the title of Jasmina Lukić's essay on the novel says—Jasmina Lukić, Svemu nasuprot in Jovanović, Pada Avala, pp. 209–239.

Jasmina Lukić's text implicitly points to the fact that our contemporary women's writing bears a burden of deeply ambivalent heritage, in the space between the western trend of liberation and the domestic trend of being burdened by reality. The first novel by Biljana Jovanović is an amalgam of both these trends, which was new at that time and presented both a strong and a bitter text.

Ljubica Arsić (1988) Čuvari kazačke ivice (Beograd: Apatridi, Radio B92) (originally published in 1989); 3rd edn (2002) (Beograd: Narodna knjiga).

All translations into English are by Biljana Dojčinović-Nešić.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Biljana Dojčinović-Nešić

Biljana Dojčinović Nešić is associate professor at the Department of Comparative Literature and Theory of Literature, Faculty of Philology, Belgrade University in Serbia. She was one of the founders of the Women's Studies Centre in Belgrade, as well as the Indoc centre in another women's NGO, Association for Women's Initiative. She has been editor-in-chief of Genero, a journal in feminist theory, since 2002. Her MA thesis, published as a book, Ginokritika: Rod i proučavanje književnosti koju su pisale žene (Gynocriticism: gender and the women's writing) in 1993, was a pioneering work, introducing gender as a category of analysis to literary studies in Serbia. She has also published Odabrana bibliografija radova iz feminističke teorije/ženskih studija 1974–1996 (Selected bibliography in feminist theory and women's studies 1974–1996). Her most recent books are Gradovi, sobe, portreti (Cities, rooms, portraits), a collection of essays on H. James, V. Woolf, C. Gilman, M. Atwood, J. Updike and K. Chopin, and Kartograf modernog sveta (Cartographer of the modern world), a study of the novels by John Updike.