LFU:online

Attending the lecture course participants will gain access to modern Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian Literature as well as to the multifaceted history of Yugoslavia.
The lecture provides insights into modern Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian literature and the multifaceted history of Yugoslavia.

Already in the 19th century the peoples of the Balkans sought to emancipate themselves from the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy by creating several alliances. The longing for a Southern Slavic Union is intensified after WWI. Writers such as Miroslav Krleža, Miloš Crnjanski and Ivo Andrić participate in different forms in this at first fantastic and later politically realised construction of Yugoslavia.
During WWII the Kingdom of Yugoslavia is for the first time under pressure. Its fragility is being reflected, the beginning of a new era eloquently displayed by myths about Partizans, while the 60’s see the first outbreaks of criticism and irony.
After the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 90’s memory, nostalgia and melancholy prevail. At the same time a transnational literary heritage promising cultural contact and like mindedness between the (ex)Yugoslavians prevails too.
The lecture deals with the literary exploration of this longed for, versatile and finally perished country.

Lecture, students are expected to read the relevant literature alongside.

Oral and written exam

Aleida Assmann 2006 Erinnerungsräume. München.

Ralph Baker Bogert 1991 The Writer as Naysayer: Miroslav Krleža and the Aesthetic of Interwar Central Europe. Columbus.

Antun Barac 1977 Geschichte der jugoslawischen Literaturen von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Wiesbaden.

Marie-Janine Calic 2010 Geschichte Jugoslawiens im 20. Jahrhundert. München

Renate Lachmann 1990 Gedächtnis und Literatur: Intertextualität in der russischen Moderne. Frankfurt a. M.

Dunja Melčić Der Jugoslawien-Krieg. Handbuch zu Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Konsequenzen. Wiesbaden.

Andrew Wachtel 1998 Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation. Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia. Stanford.

open to all interested students, no language skills required