Synopses & Reviews
The West has constructed the Balkans as a primitive space and simplified its historical and geographical realities, including journalists' accounts of recent wars in Bosnia. Based largely on translated works, this book tells how writers from former Yugoslavia have confronted this negative narrative in their novels and film. Their fictional worlds reveal an underlying fear of a return to a wild, pre-modern state. Recent crises in the region have generated apocalyptic visions of Balkan primitivism and made a myth into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Synopsis
The epitome of the myth, says Norris (Serbian and Croatian studies, U. of Nottingham) is the total destruction of civilization and a return to an atavistic, pre-modern state; and its promulgators are foreigners who assume themselves superior and know little about local realities. He points out its appearance in recent novels and movies about the region and its wars, and characterizes it as cultural colonialism that began over 150 years ago and continues to the latest news reports.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-177) and index.
About the Author
David A. Norris is Lecturer in the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham.
Table of Contents
Constructing the Balkans * Textual Representations * The Balkans Talk Back * Modernity: Urban Culture and the Balkans * Representations of City Life * Discourses of Identity and Modernity in Times of Crisis.
Constructing the Balkans * Textual Representations * The Balkans Talk Back * Modernity: Urban Culture and the Balkans * Representations of City Life * Discourses of Identity and Modernity in Times of Crisis.