Genre differentiation in ”A guided Tour through the Museum of Communism” by Slavenka Draculic
Genre differentiation in ”A guided Tour through the Museum of Communism” by Slavenka Draculic

Summary/Abstract: On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Croatian novelist Slavenka Drakulic 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 animals: 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 differentiation of its role that has been conditioned by today’s cultural memory. In that manner, mythologized 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.

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