Review article
https://doi.org/10.21857/m3v76t1l4y
Sense of national identity in Matko Peić’s Požega travel accounts
Mirko Ćurić
; Društvo hrvatskih književnika Ogranak Slavonsko-baranjsko-srijemski, Đakovo, Hrvatska
Abstract
As a travel writer Matko Peić is a homo viator, who respectfully and with plenty of enthusiasm comes to Đakovo and, upon visiting Đakovo Embroidery (Đakovači vezovi festival) writes about his impressions in three travel accounts. Peić defines this festival appreciating its importance and placing it in the international context, sensing its value for national identitiy and eager to make it interesting and appealing even for those who associate Đakovo Embroidery and all its manifestations with lower forms of culture.
In times when emphasizing one’s strong national identity was not generally acceptable, Peić employs methods of forming (and confirming) identity through promoting cultural values of a national community that creates them. Fukuyama (2020) recognizes such methods in his ‘ politics of dignity’, i. e. in thymós which is ‘the centre of today’s politics of identity’. Peić, however, uses this model in a slightly different way. Whereas, according to Fukuyama, this kind of politics is primarily directed towards others as the expression of the desire for recognising one’s values and being acknowledged and accepted in the interantional context, Peić brings this politics in relation to one’s own national community. In his richly symbolic writing, he raises the awareness of his community about its own values, striving to not only strenghten its identity (he considers it formed), but also reaffirm and reconstruct it, especially the local Slavonian identity which he sees separate from Reljković’s depiction of it in the age of Enlightenment.
Keywords
Matko Peić; travel literature; identity; thymós; Đakovo Embroidery.
Hrčak ID:
330062
URI
Publication date:
26.3.2025.
Visits: 350 *