THE THEME OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE OF VESNA PARUN
THE THEME OF MOTHERHOOD IN THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE OF VESNA PARUN

Summary/Abstract: Since the 1970’s, the theme of motherhood has been a theme of investigation in various branches of the humanities, replete with contradictions which are most evident in the cultural and literary practices by which it is represented. Research into the literary representations of motherhood has its place in the analysis of the constructs of national and cultural identities and stereotypes. Although Croatian literature in the 20th and 21st Centuries provides many texts in which the real practice of motherhood, outside the ideological and patriarchal models, is represented, giving voice to a women’s real bodily, emotional and spiritual experience, academic investigations into theme have been somewhat sporadic. The aim of this work is to disclose the representations of motherhood in the autobiographical discourse of the greatest Croatian woman writer of the 20th Century, Vesna Parun. The focus here will be on the theme of unfulfilled motherhood, as her texts often mention this theme, and how it influenced the narrative construct of its author and its author’s sense of identity. What will investigated here is how Vesna Parun took motherhood in its entirety as a major theme, especially the theme of unfulfilled motherhood (a theme that can be found in the works of Croatian literature preceding her own), as well as the procedures by which she distanced herself from the traditional concepts in which a woman’s identity is determined by her identity as a mother.

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