Baština (Jan 2018)
Stojan Novaković: The first domestic history of literature as critique
Abstract
Following the example of the first History of Serbian Literature (in 1867 the first issue and in 1871 the second one) from the pen of our historian of literature and literary critic Stojan Novaković, we are illustrating the process of maturation, forming, and functioning of literary critique in Serbian society and culture. Novaković's format of the history of literature is the one in which all other historians of literature will fit into as literary critics afterwards. As a semi-historian, the student of Daničić, and the supporter of Vuk ideas, the representative of culturo-historical critique school, historian of culture, historian of political life of the Serbian people, and scientist who requested from literature 'not to show the martyrdom of the poet but the essential life itself' in the History of Serbian Literature, which is viewed as culture, made solid fundaments to literary critique as the youngest branch of the science of literature. The idea that the literature itself is the holder of critic spirit will give birth firstly to the history of literature as critique, and afterwards the literary critique itself. Defining scientific method and the notion of the history of literature as the synthesis of positive and negative spiritual and social facts in the literature development, Novaković argues it deals with 'the development of some ideas and search of thinking directions and things understanding in different centuries' and themes of what is the occasion of such ideas appearance, development, and collapse. The role of literature focuses on the preservation of people's identity and language, while all other will be the deviation from natural development. The issue of the importance and meaning of critique is thus direct and always the one of the importance and status of culture in the society history, and tackles the way in which it is studied, and power which it conquers in the society and culture.
