The Oral Narrative Intertextuality in "Water Fairies at the Edge of the Town of Ozalj" by D. Jarnević
The Oral Narrative Intertextuality in "Water Fairies at the Edge of the Town of Ozalj" by D. Jarnević

Summary/Abstract: Dragojla Jarnević (1812-1875) was the first professional female writer in Croatia. Her work has been neglected for a long time, but in 2000, with the integral publication of her diary, the autobiographical writings, that evaluation radically changed, and D. Jarnević was proclaimed to be one of the best writers of the Croatian Romanticism and one of the most interesting names in Croatian literature of the 19th century. This paper interprets the short story "Water fairies at the edge of the town of Ozalj" (Patriotic stories, 1843) through the lens of the oral literature, traditional customs and beliefs. In this story the writer creates a fantastic story involving the mythical oral narrative text of water fairies who influence the fate of the protagonists. Beside this, D. Jarnević, in this story and many others, inspects the position of the individuals in the Croatian society of the 19th century by investigating the question of the female position in that period.

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