IMAGES OF VILLAGE IN VLADAN DESNICA'S NOVEL ZIMSKO LJETOVANJE

Abstract

The paper analyses the images of village and its habitants, present in the consciousness of the habitants of Zadar, in Vladan Desnica's novel Zimsko ljetovanje. Theoretical and methodological support is found in the Imagology, a discipline of Comparative Literature. The paper starts with an assumption that urban and rural cultures are two separate cultures and it analysis the images and prejudice that one culture has about the other. The construction of the urban identity is connected with the construction of its other: the rural identity. The habitants of Smiljevci are progeny of the Morlacs, introduced to literature by Alberto Fortis in 18th century. Habitants of Zadar in Zimsko ljetovanje see the habitants of Smiljevci as wild, dirty, rough and uncivilized, according to the colonizing and half-orientalist discourse about the east Adriatic coast created in what is today known as Italy.