The Poetics of Slavdom

Between 1400 and 1878, the majority of Southern Slavic peoples endured several centuries of Ottoman rule. In the nineteenth century there was a movement among both the Croats and the Serbs to set aside regional, ethnic, religious, and cultural differences in order to work together toward the liberation of all the Southern Slavs from the Ottoman yoke. These volumes explore how the masterpieces of two leading poets among the Croats and Serbs – Ivan Mažuranić (1814-1890) and Petar II Petrović Njegoš (1813-1851), who was Prince-Bishop of Montenegro from 1830-1851 – dealt with the Southern Slavs’ relationship to Islam in their greatest poetic works, <I>The Death of Smail-agha Čengić</I> and <I>The Mountain Wreath</I>, respectively.