Genre differentiation in A guided Tour through the Museum of Communism by Slavenka Drakulić
Jakov Sabljić
jsabljic@ffos.hr
Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia
Tina Varga Oswald
tvarga@ffos.hr
Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Trg Svetog Trojstva 3, 31000, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract:
On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Croatian novelist Slavenka Dra-kulić simultaneously in several countries published a collection of essays titled A Guided Tour through the Museum of Communism. The collection consists of eight stories narrated by ani-mals: a mole, a mouse, a dog, a cat, a raven, a parrot, a pig and a bear. The animals talk about neuralgic issues of Communism in former Eastern European countries (Eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rumania, Albania, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Bulgaria). The genre differentiation is based on determining postmodern variations of basic genre conventions in the process of creating a piece of literature. Fable variations are determined by analyzing the relationship between a fable and other genre forms, such as, an essay, a novella, a legend, a myth. Next to genre differentiation of a literary structure, one can also observe the differen-tiation of its role that has been conditioned by today’s cultural memory. In that manner, my-thologized persons, objects and features of Communism are analyzed as universal symbols of a message, as well as elements of a satiric play. This paper will determine in which ways the above mentioned variations enrich the existent genre forms.
Key words:
genre differentiation, Slavenka Drakulić, fable, ideology, mythology
DOI: 10.15503/jecs20131-243-256
