 | ||
Montenegrin literature is the literature written in the South Slavic country of Montenegro, mainly in Serbian language.
Contents
Characteristics
Although there are works written at least 800 years ago (like the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja), the most important representatives are writers who lived in 19th and 20th century and wrote mainly in Serbian.
The first literary works written in the region are ten centuries old, and the first Montenegrin book was printed five hundreds years ago. In Venetian Cattaro (actual Kotor) there were a group of writers and poets that introduced Renaissance culture in coastal Montenegro, writing in Latin and Italian: Ludovico Pasquali, Giovanni Bona de Boliris, Giovanni Polizza, Giorgio Bisanti, Girolamo Pima, Timoteo Cisilla, Giovanni Crussala, Giuseppe Bronza and Girolamo Panizzola.
The first state-owned printing press (Printing House of Crnojevići) was located in Cetinje in 1494, where the first South Slavic book was printed the same year (Oktoih). A number of medieval manuscripts, dating from the 13th century, are kept in the Montenegrin monasteries.
On the substratum of traditional oral folk epic poetry, authors like Petar II Petrović Njegoš have created their own expression. His epic Gorski Vijenac (The Mountain Wreath), written in the Serbian vernacular, presents the central point of the Montenegrin Serbs culture.
Other contemporary poets include:Balša Brković, Borislav Jovanović and Jevrem Brković.