SUŠENA KALJUŽA BY JANKO POLIĆ KAMOV AS SELFBEGETTING NOVEL

Abstract

This paper considers Isušena kaljuža by Janko Polić Kamov as a metatextual novel that structurally undermines the conventions of the literary system, and, by proxy, the conventions upon which reality is based. Characteristic of this prose is the use of conventional elements that point to their inappropriateness for the crisis-related and obsessive experience of the condition of social reality, as well as toying with the receiver’s expectations.
Isušena kaljuža depicts the development of the narrator to the point at which he takes over the writing of the novel that comprises him, so in this so called self-begetting novel – the term is taken from Patricia Waugh’s critical system – metatextuality is limited, which will be explicated through the analysis of forms and ways of actualization of metafiction in novelistic discourse. In the discourse of Isušena kaljuža by Janko Polić Kamov diegetic selfconsciousness and linguistic selfconsciousness of the text are recognized and described - the terms is taken from Linda Hutcheon’s critical system. It is also recognized that the novel has overt forms of linguistic and diegetic selfconsciousness (parody, mise en abyme, allegory) and covert form of diegetic selfconsciousness.
If we look at the totality of metanarrative prose as a bipolar spectrum, as opposed to radical experimental prose (aleatory writing), Isušena kaljuža belongs at the moderate pole of metanarrative forms.