engleski

The Gender of Croatian Modernity: Marija Jurić Zagorka and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić

Mainly due to the growing influence of feminist theory and cultural studies among Croatian literary scholars in the last ten to fifteen years, there has been a surge of academic interest in women writers. This seems especially to be the case with early 20th century women writers who were previously marginalized or largely invisible in the Croatian literary canon, which as part of the Western canon privileged modernist writing and "high" art over more popular literature, as well as male over female authors. Two women writers currently attracting the most attention are Marija Jurić Zagorka and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić. Although read and loved by a wider audience, they have mostly been relegated to the fringes of the literary canon, Zagorka as a writer of popular historical romances and Brlić- Mažuranić as a children's author. During her lifetime, Zagorka endured many hateful and violent attacks from her male critics who called her writing "Schundliteratur [trash] for peasant women" as well as from her political enemies who labelled her a "disgusting man- woman" because of her gender non-conforming appearance and attitude. Conversely, but originating from the same patriarchal ideal of femininity, Brlić-Mažuranić was described by her male contemporaries as a "true Croatian aristocrat – a mother, an honourable lady" and her writing as an expression of "such heartfelt feminine charm and elegance". These opinions are disproved and themselves scrutinized as contemporary academic research reveals the life and work of both authors as a great deal more complex and contradictory than dated stereotypes of femininity suggest. In recent years, many academic papers and a number of books and edited volumes have been published on Marija Jurić Zagorka and Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, and both writers now have museums dedicated to preserving their legacy: Zagorka's museum is located in her Zagreb apartment and also houses the Croatian Centre for Women's Studies and Brlić-Mažuranić's work is celebrated in Ivana's House of Fairy Tales in Ogulin. This new research has certainly led to Zagorka's and Brlić-Mažuranić's more central position in the Croatian canon, however, as authors of popular and children's fiction, their position will inevitably remain precarious until the literary and ideological values underlying the formation and modification of the literary canon itself are more powerfully challenged.

Modernity ; women writers ; canon ; popular literature

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