ythical narrative of migration and home in Vojvodina Slovak literature

Abstract

Even though the historical narrative of the (mythical) migration of Slovaks to the Vojvodina (the so called Dolná zem – “Low Land”) and the founding of a new home is based on historical facts, it contains a range of relatively stable elements of a transnationally shared myth of the search for a promised land. This myth represents one of the key memories of the Slovak minority in Serbia, shaped and maintained across time, which contributed to the creation of national unity, a distinct image, and a specific Slovak identity. The paper primarily examines qualitatively varying literary texts in Vojvodina Slovak literature of the 20th century in which this myth and related thematic and expressive means dominate. These thematic and motivic paradigms include motifs of migration, flatland, land, building a house, ancestors, and others, often portrayed in comparison to what things were like in the old homeland. These, through systematic repetition in many works of fiction and non-fiction, contributed to the construction of the myth of the promised land and the finding of a second homeland which became part of the collective memory of Vojvodina Slovaks. In this sense, one can also speak of the historical and cultural memory of the Vojvodina Slovak ethnic group and the building of a distinctive Vojvodina – “Lowland” – Slovak identity.

Keywords

• vojvodina slovak literature
• lower land
• myth
• identity
• self-identification