Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21066/carcl.libri.12.2.4
The Poetics of Ivanjska noć [Midsummer Night] by Josip Cvrtila in the Light of Literary-Historical, Literary-Critical and Literary-Theoretical Writings
Vladimira Rezo
orcid.org/0000-0003-1446-4896
; Faculty of Croatian Studies, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
As a consequence of the forcing of realist writers in children’s literature which he was not, and as a result of his absence from Croatia, the targeted concealment of his name and works due to the Christian spirit that permeated them, as well as due to his voluntary vow of silence in emigration, Josip Cvrtila is not in the focus of modern readers. The analysis of the author’s literary debut, the collection Ivanjska noć [Midsummer Night] (1922), shows Cvrtila as an anticipator of several postmodernist processes. In the realistic fairy-tale matrix, the author mixes major literary forms, genres (poetry and prose) and prose subgenres (fairy tales, fables, legends, and short stories), plays with the laws of genres, is self-referential in places, introduces real recipients into the fabric of the story (two little neighbours, Ivo and
Ančica), and sometimes recounts the circumstances of the reception of certain stories (their oral presentations that preceded the version in the collection) and reveals the sources of other stories. This genre and subgenre hybrid flirts with intertextuality, brings metatextuality into focus, and announces the insatiable need of new poetics to expose the narrative process.
Keywords
Christian viewpoint; fairy tales; fantasy; genre and subgenre hybrid; intertextuality; Ivanjska noć [Midsummer Night]; Josip Cvrtila; self-referentiality;
Hrčak ID:
314295
URI
Publication date:
2.12.2023.
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