An Anatomy of Tragic Femininity in Southeast European Literature

Abstract

The  present  study  aims  to  perform  an  analysis  of  the  feminine  typology  in  southeast European literature. We undertake a comparative study of productions depicting ancient times  when  women  had  to  bear  the  burden  of  a  sealed  fate,  but  without  overlooking succeeding literary works. Bovaric, frivolous, atypical characters or widows, the women portrayed reflect a kind of personality touched by a tragic dimension inherited from myths and folklore and that finds fulfillment through metamorphosis (a dominant literary motif when  we  refer  to  southeast  European  feminine  typology).  They  illustrate  femininity manifested against the background of historical realities that have ravaged this area, but connected to an inside world rather than to immediate reality.

 

Keywords: feminine typology, tragic essence, destiny, metamorphosis, southeast European literature

 

In southeast European literature, any contact with History has something of a retrieval, of a retrospection, and – beyond the dramatic side of events circumscribed to that geographical area –, the  gesture  of  meeting  with  the  past  equals  the  “reason  of being”,  the  “literary  balkanism”. (Muthu, 1979, p. 214) Therefore, “we retrieve nothing except ourselves, endlessly. (…) Thus we retrieve  ourselves  primarily  by  remembering  those  who  existed  in  sound,  in  word,  in  color.” (Muthu, 1979, pp 213-214)  From the archaic beliefs and the richness of signs, to the folklore era that recovers a series of myths – by reinventing them – and, furthermore, to the defining literary fictions of later times, the southeast European culture went from invocation to evocation in the light of the concept of “unity in diversity”. (Muthu, 2002, p. 7)

 

      The  shared  historical  destiny  and  the  rural  mentality  induced  by  the  peasantry  as  the dominant social stratum lead to typological similarities in literar y fiction. The typological analogies are not, as Mircea Muthu states, the result of direct contacts, but rather a double consequence: both

in literature  and in the common context that binds the literary productions  of several countries experiencing the same political, economic and social issues. This is what led, in Mircea Muthu’s opinion, to relatively similar literary reactions. Thus, to the research into literary typologies, the Romanian literary balkanism contributes three axiomatic criteria that facilitate the understanding of esthetic values. The sociological, cultural mentality and human model criteria allow us to define a feminine typology representative for southeast European literature.

 

        The sociological criterion, as a melting pot of historical, economic and political events, is reflected in the literary structures of this area. Structured as a field of ambivalence,  southeast European culture becomes a confluence and “coexistence of romanticism and realism”. (Muthu,2002, p. 7) Furthermore, the literary folklorism that Mircea Muthu explains through the presence of peasantry as the dominant social stratum materializes into a rich paremiological production. Folk idiom will become, as shown by Zoran Konstantinović  (apud Muthu, 2002, p. 7), the origin of literary language, while the ballad, with its historical and mythical charge, becomes a medium for a common destiny and a means of expression that compensates for the delay with which this part of the world sees the birth of the historical novel.

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Author
Diana Codruţa CHERCOTĂ DAJU