Topos Waters in Newer Bosnian Literature

Abstract

Water, whether in a concrete or abstract sense, has an irreplaceable role in every culture and literarytradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina – from the elementary essential-biological to the ambient andpsychological in the representations of space and people. This paper will, through concrete examples,examine the role of water topos in works of Bosnian literature precisely through these segments. Thetheoretical part indicates what the water topos represents, and the interpretive part sees water as a motifand symbol in the structure of the literary text and emphasizes the inscription of factional geographicaltoponyms/hydronyms, as well as fictitious abstract (a) topos in the poetic identities of the text (andopus in its entirety). In all this, we try to prove the hypothesis that water is an identifying determinantof a certain space and time, and in the cognitive-identity sense an important marker of cultures, socialcommunities and individuals.

Keywords

• bosnian literature
• water
• river
• sea
• lake
• text