Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia

Zdenko Lei, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, 1998
"A standard reference book for everyone dealing with the history of the region."


Book Description
Women are conspicuously absent from traditional cultural histories of South-East Europe. This book addresses that imbalance by describing the contribution of women to literary culture in the Orthodox/ Ottoman areas of Serbia and Bosnia. The author provides a broad chronological account of this contribution, dividing the book into two main parts; the earlier period up until the eighteenth century concentrates on the projections of gender through the medium of oral tradition and the lives of a handful of educated women in medieval Serbia and the few works of literature they left. Hawkesworth also looks at the written literature produced by women, first in the mid-nineteenth century and then at the turn of the century. The second part focuses on the trials and tribulations that affected feminism and women's literature throughout the twentieth century. The author finishes by highlighting the new women's movement, 1975-1990, a great period for women in Yugoslavia which created a stimulating atmosphere for outstanding pieces of women's journalism, prose and verse, culminating in the creation of new women's studies courses in many universities. Voices in the Shadows is the first complete literary history in relation to women's writing in South-East Europe


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Hawkesworth (Serbian and Croation studies, U. of London) chronologically describes the contribution of Serbo-Croat speaking women to literary culture in the Orthodox/Ottoman areas of Serbia and Bosnia. The operations of gender in the oral traditions of medieval times to the production of feminists writers from 1975 to 1990 are explored. The focus extends beyond literature to political writing, speeches, and personal letters. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR


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