Anthological Canonizations of the Recent Bosnian-Herzegovinian Poetry

Abstract

This work considers the question of canon as a „place of power“ and the position of literature in relation to the ideological dictates of the so-called „social reality“. In this sense, it discusses the general social, cultural, and poetic patterns on which the canon is based, that is, the canons in the most representative anthologies of recent Bosnian-Herzegovinian poetry in the last thirty years. Understanding canonization as a model of ideological impact in the production of „literary facts“, the paper explores the attitude of anthologists towards the composite integrity of Bosnian-Herzegovinian literature and at least three poietic formulas involved in the struggle for „cultural meaning“ („poetry of re-ethnicization“, „poetry of false universalism“, „poetry of differences“). The literary canon, monolithic in socialist society and reduced by political censorship, was first nationalized and later, especially in the post-war period, decentralized and turned into alternative canons. Anthologies of Bosnian- Herzegovinian poetry distinctly follow the mentioned evolution, and in that way contribute to the stratification of the canon and the breaking of its „hegemony“.