Dubravki Ugresic poszukiwania literatury środka

Abstract

Postmodern stage of Dubravka Ugrešić writings was presented in the article, where special attention was paid to two novels: Stefcia Ćwiek: In claws of life as well as Novel‑river crossing. Thanks to them, the writer has gained popularity on Yugoslavian literary market. Literary strategies that were used in the novels allowed to avoid trap of closure and be faithful to “avant‑garde ethos”, which ideas are nearly the same as Ugrešić ones. Both novels are literary responses to dilemmas of early postmodernism. Ugrešić shows the ways of functioning in modern culture, its customs, style and economic situation on success. The writer makes polemic about presented world and applied genre. Polemical‑ironical posture based on play and parody as well as intertextuality, in connection with new compositive‑stylistic ideas, leads the writer to the popular novel, which is full of high literature values. This, as a result situates the writer not on borderland of high and popular literature but in the circle of middle literature that is literature which does not resign from old ideas and is open to wide public. Moreover, it is literature, which searches for appropriate literary formula.