Writing The Dictatorship: Reuse Of Myth In Ismail Kadare’s Novels

Abstract

This study attempts to analyse how and why Kadare reuses myths in his novels Chronicle in Stone, The Bearer of ill Tidings – Islamo nox, Agamemnon's Daughter and Beauty Pageant for Men in the Accursed Mountains. I will be arguing that the reused myths in these novels predominantly convey a message about Albania at the time during which Kadare wrote the novels. It will be argued that the novels are used to critique the period of Communism and the period immediately after the collapse of Communism, even when they are set in different time periods, and it is through a use of myths and archetypes that Kadare manages this. It was necessary for Kadare to write his criticism of aspects of communist society through the use of the myths, in order for him to escape the censorship of the Communist Party, which required all literary works to conform to socialist realism, and to present a particular ideological view. This idea will be analysed predominantly in the discussions around Chronicle in Stone, The Bearer of ill Tidings – Islamo nox and Agamemnon's Daughter. On the other hand, Beauty Pageant for Men in the Accursed Mountains was written in the post-Communist period, though Kadare still felt it necessary to investigate the transitional society in Albania through the use of mythical aspects as metaphors.