Gun-Britt Kohler

Auf der Suche nach einer Ästhetik des Funktionellen – der ‚Wert‘ der Literatur zur Zeit des kroatischen Illyrismus

Contemporaries saw the Croatian literature, which arised and was promoted within the framework of the Illyrian movement, as an instrument to promote national consciousness and to educate the people in their national language. This stage of the Croatian literature, which is oscillating between the connection to European romanticism and the concentration on building an own identity is usually considered by the literary history as the constitutional epoch of ‚Modern Croatian literature‘ (novija hrvatska književnost), in spite of aesthetic poverty and low poetic quality, which this same literature is usually blamed for. This article is investigating the reasons for this ambivalent judgement, and is showing, that the submission of literature under utilitarian aims and the inadequate theoretical thinking of this time do not allow denying the aesthetic value of the literature during the illyrian movement. The Croatian literary creating of the middle of the 19th century rather knows interesting mnemotechnical proceedings, which aesthetically enrich the functional purposes of literature.