Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.17234/Croatica.67.11
SHE AND THEY: MODERNITY OF ANKA ŽAGAR'S LYRIC POETRY
Andrea Milanko
orcid.org/0000-0003-3943-7771
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Lyric poetry by Anka Žagar has been present in Croatian literary space for four decades, having changed little to none. Its canonical status has been unchallenged, and springs from its author's rich stylistic expression. Over the years, it has been labelled postmodern, as well as belonging to écriture féminine, thus supplementing the stylistic perspective, but the cost has been paid in terms of critics' inability to appreciate true revolutionarity of Zagar's lyric poetry. These labels have moved reading of Zagar's poetry away from its inherent modernity and towards her predecessors or peers. In this paper, two lines of argument are followed: one is critically tackling with reception of Zagar's poetry from the first book of poetry "Išla i... sve zaboravila" (1983) to "Stvarnice, nemirna površina" (2008), and the other singles out and analyzes instances of modernity in her ouvre. Here, modernity is not understood as a term of literary history, but as a product of inner dialectic processes governed by literary evolution. Namely, modernity is a relative notion and it is defined by mutual relations between a particular historical moment and its past, aiming to surpass the latter by ever novel poetical means, without losing intelligibility in the process.
Keywords
Anka Žagar; modernity; écriture feminine; metapoetry; lyric poem
Hrčak ID:
315187
URI
Publication date:
14.3.2024.
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