Slobodan Prosperov Novak

Biography

Prosperov Novak was born in Belgrade, but spent his childhood in Dubrovnik. He graduated comparative literature in 1973 at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, receiving his M.A. in 1976 and Ph.D. in 1978. He worked as a journalist in a periodical Vjesnik u srijedu (1973–1974).

In 1977 he is an assistant, and in 1988 a professor of Old Croatian literature at the Faculty of Philosophy. In the period of 1981-1984 he teaches at the Institute for Slavic Philology of the University of Rome, and from 1990-1992 he serves as an assistant of the minister of education, culture and sport of the Republic of Croatia.

In 1990-1992 he was the president of the council of Dubrovnik Summer Festival, and in 2000 served as its head.

He was the initiator and the first editor-in-chief of Matica hrvatska's periodical Vijenac.

He was also the editor of the journal Lettre internationale and the magazine Cicero.

For a number of years he edited a periodical of Croatian writers Most ("The Bridge"). He served as a president of Croatian PEN society in the period 1990-2000, organizing with his co-workers in 1993, in war-affected Dubrovnik, the 59th Word PEN Congress. In 1998 he instituted Mediterranean Institute Grga Novak on the island of Hvar.

From 2001-2005 he taught South Slavic philology at the Department for Slavic studies of the University of Yale in New Haven, USA. Since 2010, he teaches literature at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb.

He edited several books on Croatian writers, authored many literary anthologies, and was the creator of multimedial projects, such as the theater shows Ecce homo and Kako bratja prodaše Jozefa at Dubrovnik Summer Festival in 1995.

He worked on a grand exhibition "Gundulićev san" ("Gundulić's dream") in 1989 in the museum space of the city of Zagreb.

Notable works

Some of his notable published works are: