The Issue of Genre in Pekić's Early Opus

Ljiljana Pticina

Abstract

The paper presents the analysis of genre definition of Pekić’s prose. Genre definition of the prose work The time of miracles is mainly analysed and explained, which theoreticians define differently, determining it as a chain, stories, but also as a novel. The analysis of the corpus, that is, the works The time of miracles and New Jerusalem is conducted through the prism of Bakhtin’s theory on the novel, with a brief resistance of Lukacs’ theory to Bakhtin’s when it comes to the analysis of Pekić’s prose. After the explanation of the characterisation of The time of miracles as a novel, we deal with chronotope, as genre definition, where the most common chronotopes that we encounter in Pekić’s prose are indicated. The novelties that Pekić brings to Serbian literature are reflected in one complete novelistic image, a parallel world, documented by historical sources, the witness’ stories, archeological sites. Generally speaking, the central point of his work is occupied by problematising man’s position in the world in general – so, also in the past, present, but in the future as well. And precisely that and such his relation towards culture and existence – erudite, problematising, predictive, revealing – is “analogous to the correlations between chronotope within the work“ (Bakhtin, 1989, p. 386).


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