Novelistička i šaljiva priča u bošnjačkoj usmenoj prozi
Novelistic and humorous short story in Bosniak oral prose

Author(s): Amira Dervišević
Subject(s): Bosnian Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Theory of Literature
Published by: Slavistički komitet BiH
Keywords: Bosnian literature; short story; humorous literature;
Summary/Abstract: According to the materials found so far and available documents, it seems that the oldest samples of Bosniak short and humorous stories were recorded by means of Turkish language, done by hand of a Sarajevo chronicler, Mula Mustafa Bašeskija, and they go as far as the middle of the 18th century.From then until nowadays, the stories have been collected, recorded,and published occasionally. The first scripts of oral prose were mainly the result of some individual engagement, however, they had not been recorded in a professional and planned way until 1960s, under the auspices of the Ethnographic Department of the National Museum in Sarajevo, and the Institute for research of folklore in Sarajevo. The oral stories of Bosniaks are characterized by a thematic and motif variety as well as by a constant topic pattern. Didactical and entertaining modes were frequently formed and interwoven harmoniously, so that they make these stories didactical and amusing at the same time. The topic patterns owe their vitality to independent solutions of talented transferors of oral tradition, who – acting in accordance with the strict requirements of the genre – could express themselves at the level of language primarily. Similarly to other traditions, Bosniak short stories and humorous ones as well, have the features of the environment that created them. Comparing the most successful samples of stories recorded in Bosniak community poetically speaking to those in the neighbouring regions, as well to some oral-prose tradition in some distant places, one can find out that there is a similarity in narration, but also that the topic pattern differ mainly due to regional traits as well as independent solutions of the female and male narrators created during the very process of telling a story to their audience.

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