Central European Drama at the Beginning of the 20th Century (Slovenian Ivan Cankar and Croatian Miroslav Krleža)

Syllabus

1. Characteristics of the period.

Drama and theatre in Europe at the turn of the Century and at the beginning of 20th Century. The development of modern drama.

Transition from the 19th to the 20th century. Modernism and Expressionism. 2.

Slovenian and Croatian drama in the modern period at the beginning of the 20th century. 3. Ivan Cankar and the development of Slovenian drama.

The main characteristics of his drama. His plays between realism and symbolism. 4.

Analysis of the drama Ivan Cankar, Kralj na Betajnovi, (The King of Betajnova) 1902. 5. Analysis of the drama Ivan Cankar, Hlapci (The Serfs, 1910) 6.

Miroslav Krleža and the development of Croatian drama. The main characteristics of his drama. 7.

Miroslav Krleža, Gospoda Glembayevi (Messrs. Glembay.

A Drama in Three Acts from the Life of One Agramer Patrician Family of Glembay), 1928. 8. Miroslav Krleža, Agonija, "At agony", 1928. 9.

Miroslav Krleža, "Leda", 1932.   10. Summary of  his dramatic work. “The Glembaj Family” as an indictment of the decadence of the Croatian bourgeoisie under the rule of Austria-Hungary. 11.

Comparative analyses. 12. Concluding remarks.

Annotation

In the lecture, we will focus on drama in Central Europe (in Slovenia and Croatia) at the beginning of the 20th century - in the period of modernism and expressionism. We will deal with the dramas of two key writers - representatives from South Slavic literature: Slovenian Ivan Cankar and Croatian Miroslav Krleža.

We will focus on their plays, which critically reflected society in their period, which criticized national myths and depicted negative phenomena in the national society and Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In the analyses, we will discuss modern and traditional elements in their dramatic work.