Loveći vampira od Jadrana do Karpata: Balkanizam u romanu Povjesničarka Elizabeth Kostove
Catching the vampires from the Adriatic to the Carpathians: Balkanism in the novel The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Summary/Abstract: Elizabeth Kostova's novel The Historian (2005) was generally recognized by literary critics as a literary more serious work than numerous contemporary trivial vampire sagas. In their appraisals, critics especially emphasized The Historian’s interweaving of elements common in vampire fiction with the historical and travel-writing fragments referring to South-East Europe, the emergence of female narrator, and the unconventional structure of the novel. This paper discusses the links between those critics’ remarks, but in the same time tries to offer different critical perspective of that novel. As opposed to affirmative evaluations which praised The Historian’s originality and progressiveness, we enquire whether its detachment from the conventional vampire fiction is minimal, and whether highly acclaimed acting on South-East European history and space is rather a model example of Balkanistic discourse. Besides that, we question claims of the unconventionality of the novel’s narrative structure and the female narrative perspective. In conclusion of the analysis we find that – despite the opposite intentions and superficial markers – patronizing Balkanism, strict reproduction of vampire fiction stereotypes and the non-existence of any subaltern perspective are results of the same deep discourse elements present in Kostova’s novel.

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