"Pedagogije ženskog" u zajedničkoj kupki Ranka Marinkovića
"Pedagogies of the Feminine" In Ranko Marinković's Zajednička kupka

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to analyze the »pedagogical« theme in Marinković’s novels Zajednička kupka and Never more, as well as Jules Dassin’s film Never on Sunday. The first part of the discussion is concerned with the issue of the male characters’ attempt to exert educational influence over the female characters: in Zajednička kupka, the judge tells his wife instructive stories in order to morally improve her; in Never more, Bartol narrates Greek myths as women’s stories to his uneducated girlfriend Ita; and in Dassin’s film, Homer, the American intellectual, sets out to reeducate Illia, who makes a living as a prostitute. The female characters’ lack of education thereby presents itself in the way they read literary, i.e. narrative texts. I believe that the different approaches to literature shown in the novels and film could be interpreted using the following dichotomies, which to a certain extent correspond to the distinction between »masculine« and »feminine« ways of reading: Biti’s categories of reader as »consumer« vs. reader as »aesthete« (Marinković); the one who enjoys vs. the one who judges (Goethe); first-order observer vs. secondorder observer (Luhmann), as well as Girard’s distinction between the »romantic lie« and the »romanesque truth«. The second part of the analysis centers on the issue of women’s popular culture, i.e. women’s genres. Since in Never more the Antigone myth is clearly reduced to a »tale for maidens« or a »women’s story«, it was my intention to compare the male character’s endeavor to educate the female characters and the way in which feminists try to raise the consciousness of so-called ordinary women, or more precisely, ordinary women readers. The third part of the discussion seeks to find a link between the above-mentioned educational tales and the one about literary theory’s laying claim to a final, correct reading of a text.

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