An Imagological Reading of Josip Kozarac’s "Tena" or How Slavonia Became "Unrestrained"

On the 160th anniversary of Josip Kozarac’s birth (1858–1906)

Sažetak

The article will imagologically analyse Kozarac’s story Tena, published in 1894 in the journal Dom i sviet (The Home and the World). The colonial past of Slavonia and the imperial policy of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy have been eternalized in the story, and can be read and decoded with a postcolonial key; therefore, the apparatus of postcolonial theory and criticism is applicable to its interpretation. Since the Other is of crucial importance in postcolonial theory, the article will focus on hete­ro-images and the identity markers of Others who contributed to the sad narrative of the fate of a Slavonian Posavina (the region of the Sava River basin) village at the end of the 19th century, and of the village beauty Tena, and contributed to her submissiveness arising from colonial and gender repression, and social poverty. The article will track the process of stereotyping, beginning with a prototype originating in the life of Vrbanja, and continuing with Kozarac’s narrative and the literary character of Tena until reaching the stereotype of unrestrained Slavonia.