Croatian literature

The Croatian literature Croatian literature reflects the historical events and human resources of this land border, an important witness of cultures, languages, conflict and sudden transformations. Events that have been able to shape a structure still in search of its own identity uniform.
We find not only the typical brand Slavic, Balkan countries' own, or the fascinating Orientalism which survives in people who were dominated from the Ottoman Empire, but also a deep-rooted Italian culture. The languages ​​are the Croatian language and Serbian, very similar but from different sources, respectively the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. A fact that highlights, regardless of ethnic tensions traditionally present, Occidentalism and Orientalism inherent in the history of the nation.

The literature of Croatia is facing the history capturing the highlights, from the Renaissance to Romanticism, with its currents of Symbolism. Croatia was not new to the currents of thought centuries before, during the Renaissance Croatian and the free Republic of Dubrovnik, were able to express themselves as poets Giorgio Sisgoreo (known in Croatian as Juraj Sizgoric), from Dalmatia (Sibenik) and lived during the rule of Venice, one of the most important figures of the humanist circle of žibenik. There are writers like Marko Marulić, the playwright Marin Drzic (who wrote the play Uncle Maroje, in 1550), Ivan Gundulić and his pastoral Dubravka (1628).

At the end of the sixteenth century appears in the literary scene Croatian Bartol Kažić (Italianized Bartolomeo Cassio), the father of the Croatian language and the one who wrote the first Croatian grammar and translated the Bible in Croatian language (XVI-XVII century). Denying the importance of the Illyrian movement (Ilirski pokret), a political and cultural campaign started by some young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of the nineteenth century, among which one can not fail to mention Ljudevit Gaj (1809-1851). The Illyrian movement was the most important nationalist movement in the country, seen in the context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In the twentieth century Croatian literature in the country again landed in the sea of ​​its historical events. Movements such as Futurism and Surrealism expand in Croatia with the avant-garde movements, seen in the light of socialist realism. The contemporary Croatian literature is developed separately from across the border 'regional', despite the unification of the Slav territories. They fit alongside awarded authors Slovenian and Serbian, Croatian writers as Miroslav Krleža (1893-1981), considered one of the greatest writers of merit in the history of Croatia, and Tadijanovic Dragutin (1905-2007), one of the largest and most influential poets of the twentieth century.