THE PLURALITY OF BOSNIAN LITERACY
THE PLURALITY OF BOSNIAN LITERACY

Summary/Abstract: The past provides the framework for this paper’s treatment of the plurality of Bosnian literacy. In the present, Medieval Bosnian literacy forms a heritage for three distinct literary-linguistic traditions. We must, therefore, emphasise that how it is seen to fit into those traditions is a matter of perspective. How the various national traditions receive Bosnian medieval literacy and, therefore, its importance for each of them varies, depending on how the medieval Bosnian documents are viewed. One option is to view them as a phenomenon found on the periphery of other centres of literacy within the Central South Slavic (Serbo-Croat) space. Another is to view them as expressing a set of characteristics and reflecting a unique combination of influences emanating from a centre of their own. There is room for both these perspectives, however contradictory, in so far as they both occupy a single linguistic space and, more particularly, because Old Church Slavonic (as the language of both cult and an aristocratic elite culture) served a broad Slavic space during the Medieval era. This effectively neutralised linguistic differences, which were, in any case, smaller than nowadays.

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