The Childhood and Children’s Characters in Samokovlija’s Short Stories

Abstract

The characters of children in Samokovlija’s stories left a distinctive and recognizable mark in the literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Following the postulates of Ariès, this Paper examines the phenomenon of childhood from the perspective of the changeability in the comprehension of the position of the child and childhood in various social and ideological contexts. The children's characters, according to the considerations included, are contextualized between real and literary–fictional aspects of the Sephardic heritage. Based on the selected examples of Samokovlija's stories about childhood and children, we perceive the author's most important narrative strategies. The Paper also points to how much traditional comprehension of the child and childhood in the literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the Bosnian – Sephardic literary heritage made typically and characteristically social, cultural, and historical elements of the identity be incorporated in Samokovlija's characters of children.

Keywords

• the childhood
• isak samokovlija
• sephardic literature
• the bosnian-herzegovinian short stories about children