The Ethnomyth of Šokci
The Ethnomyth of Šokci

Summary/Abstract: While this study intends to chart the present state of the ethnomyth of ŠŠokci in Slavonia, it will also take some obligatory detours into Slavonian and ŠŠokci literary imagology where the basic ŠŠokci mythologems lie. I am going to analyze the most striking components: myths of origin of ŠŠokci and of imaginary ŠŠokci ancestral land, founding memory figures (““great ŠŠokci””), established images of identity preserved in literary icons of the ŠŠokci world (Đuka Begović, Tena) and recent ŠŠokci cultural practices including the procedures through which the tradition is being renewed or constructed. The study attempts to point not only to the background of the rhetorical operations of the replacement of the Slavonian name with the ŠŠokci name but also to contribute to a better understanding of the personal, non-ŠŠokci insider position in Slavonia which is interspersed in the mesh of ŠŠokci ethnomyths. For comparative and heuristic purposes a cursory overview of the fate of ethnomyth of ŠŠokci in Serbia (Voivodina) is given.

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