Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 42 No. 1, 2016.
Original scientific paper
THE FORMATION OF READERS’ TASTE IN CROATIAN ANTHOLOGIES OF WORLD LITERATURE
Kristina Grgić
orcid.org/0000-0003-1767-651X
; Faculty of philosophy in Zagreb, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Following the assumption that anthologies can function as an important means of literary communication in any given culture, intended for both professional and nonprofessional readers, the article discusses a group of Croatian anthologies of world literature published in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s. Through the analysis of their basic parameters (space, time, genres and authors) it aims to reconstruct their representations of world literature, linking them to the two important tendencies that arose in the aforesaid period in Croatian and world culture, and continued up to the present: an increased interest in foreign (and particularly Western) literatures, and the relativisation of the idea of aesthetic value, partially prompted by a strong rise of popular or trivial literature. Particular attention is paid to the editors' attempts to accommodate the idea of world literature to their own literary and cultural context, and hence to their target audience as well. While trying to act as guides through the field of world literature to Croatian readers, these anthologies, as the analysis concludes, also provide them with a certain standard of “good” readers’ taste.
Keywords
anthology; world literature; professional and nonprofessional readers; taste
Hrčak ID:
158184
URI
Publication date:
9.5.2016.
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