Original scientific paper

Slamnig’s Postmodern Escape

Kristina Grgić orcid.org/0000-0003-1767-651X ; Faculty of philosophy in Zagreb

Abstract

Slamnig’s novel The Better Half of courage, which, in croatian literary science and literary criticism, was at the same time seen as the peak of modernist poetics of croatian prose during the fifties and the sixties of the 20th century, especially so called »jeans prose«, but also as the »ground zero of croatian postmodern fiction« (k. Nemec); the novel takes special place in the history of contemporary croatian novel. In Slamnig’s inauguration of postmodern paradigm, the appearing of the frequent motive, in the prose of that time, the »evasion« in the last scene of Flaks’ escape, is significant. Open to seemingly contradictory interpretations, such as: the escape from reality into fiction or, from fiction to reality, and as the negation of tradition and / or its affirmation, the final act of Slamnig’s novel at the same time becomes the last stage of meta-textual construction of his narrative world. In the analyses of The Better Half of courage as the postmodern meta-fictional novel, the author tries to see in what way, in Slamnig’s text, is one of the key motives of the croatian modernist prose and its complete paradigm transformed, in other words, in what way did Flaks’ escape open the new chapter in the history of the modern croatian novel.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

72796

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/72796

Publication date:

27.4.2010.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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