Regional Literary models and the Contemporary Canon of Croatian Children’s Literature

Abstract

When balancing between ideologies and aesthetic values, literary canon, despite it primarily signifying a specific list/rule, is understood to be an “imaginary totality” (Guillory 1993) and a permanently active and socially conditioned process (Bourdieu 1993). That is the direction of discussing and examining the canon of Croatian children’s literature taken by Croatian theorists who focus on the social, historical and ideological context as well as changes reflected on the system of desirable social values, and consequently on shaping the canon of children’s literature. Croatian children’s literature is an ideal example of it due to its existence within Yugoslav children’s literature. On the other hand, very little is said about the regional characteristics of Croatian children’s canon as a cultural capital constructed within the new circumstances of the nineties. These characteristics were created by “reshaping the canonical tables” (Težak and Marušić 2015), which also secured a more significant position of regional poetics and politics. Examining the concept of literary regionalism, Brešić (2004) finds merit for the existence of separate literary poetics with respect to geographical space and discusses the characteristics of Slavonian regional literature as a model of autonomous structure from the perspective of history and theory of literature. In doing so, he considers space a crucial category which conditioned the dispersive character of Croatian literature. The concept of literary regionalism interpreted in such a way allows for a discussion on poetic features of regional literary texts unique by their historical, cultural and linguistic journey determined by space. Therefore, starting from the “identity of a place” (Brešić 2004) as a fusion of space and culture, the paper analyses regional topics within the canonical body of work based on anthologies and overviews of Croatian children’s literature. It also establishes their affiliation to a regional literary model, defines the characteristics of a local entity (Sablić-Tomić and Rem 2003), whereby reading the regional within the canon contributes to asserting canonical status while pushing the boundaries of defining the canon.