На темељима праксе: периодизација српске књижевности Јована Деретића

Abstract

Иако је, по сопственом признању, до теоријске концепције књижевноисторијске периодизације дошао тек пошто је написао Исtорију срpске књижевносtи, Јован Деретић показао је важну способност теоријског уопштавања својих историчарских искустава, као и усвајања критичких примедаба. Захваљујући томе, накнадно осмишљен систем периодизације извршио је повратни утицај на организацију књижевноисторијске грађе, што је довело до знатног побољшања његове историјске синтезе у издању последње воље.

Per his own recognition, Jovan Deretić made his theoretical concept of literary-historical periodization only after he wrote History of Serbian Literature (1983), but there is no doubt that his “post-thinking“ represented concretization of ideas which he implicitly followed from the very beginning of writing of his synthesis. In his 1985 review he presented two previous models of periodization of Serbian literature – Stojan Novaković’s from 1871 and Jovan Skerlić’s from 1912 – Deretić showed more affection towards the older one, because it included “the entire development of Serbian literature“, and also because Skerlić tried to align Serbian literature at any cost with trends in West European literature, especially French one, which many historians will follow later. To Deretić it seemed that in some of the then-popular synthesis “as if the history of literature is not made by writers and their works, but by literary trends“, and sometimes there were distortions of natural chronology. Therefore, he in general accepted Dragiša Živković’s point that modern model of periodization should be built on the foundations of Novaković’s “anticipation of one concept, built on national foundations and according to national characteristics“ history of literature, which should be expanded and enriched by learnings of modern stylistics and poetics. Deretić’s traditionalistic concept was based on connecting literary-historical periodization with facts from social and cultural history, with awareness that literary periods have their own inner literary-artistic characteristics which are also their key cohesive factor. In the already completed realization of this idea, however, it turned out that this goal was not always easy to achieve, which led to criticism of his History and its periodization system. Dragan M. Jeremić was the harshest critic, although he was mainly constructive and well-intentioned. Deretić, from his side, displayed not only his ability of theoretical generalization of historical experience, but also of adopting critical remarks. Thanks to this, periodization system which was created later had reverse impact on organization of literary-historical material, which led to significant improvement of its historical synthesis in the last edition. In its final form, Serbian literature was divided into: 1) Middle Ages; 2) Age of Turkish rule; 3) Older shtokavian literature; 4) Folk literature; 5) Literature of the 18th century: Baroque and Enlightenment; 6) Classicism and Pre-romanticism; 7) Romanticism; 8) Realism; 9) Moderna; 10) Avant-garde and New realism and 11) Literature of the second half of the 20th century.