History and Literature in the Historical Novels of Ksaver Šandor Gjalski
History and Literature in the Historical Novels of Ksaver Šandor Gjalski

Summary/Abstract: The paper begins by asserting that the historical novels of Ksaver Šandor Gjalski have received special treatment in Croatian literary historiography, which tends to ascribe to them a more a documentary and historiographic rather than liter-ary value. This paper will analyse the Romantic, realist and modernist features of Gjalski’s historical novels Osvit. Slike iz tridesetih godina (Dawn. Pictures from the [18]30s) (1892) and Za materinsku riječ. Slike iz četrdeset osme godine (For the Maternal Word. Pictures from [18]48) (1906). In the light of theories of histories as stories (narratives), this paper will indicate that their so-called documentary value is attributable to literary strategies that are used to interpret the past they repre-sent in a specific way, and not to record what is assumed to be the authentic past.

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