SPITE AND SOUR CREAM IN THE WONDERLAND

Abstract

In this paper, we will deal with stereotypes that one of the most versatile Serbian artists, Momo Kapor, explains and interprets about his people in the book A Guide to the Serbian Mentality. Since the appearance of the earliest travelogues about the Balkans and its inhabitants, the image that was transmitted further into the world has represented this area as wild and its people as insufficiently civilised. Writing for the review of the national airline in order to interest those who will soon land in Serbia, to better explore the space where they found themselves, Momo Kapor uses previously adopted stereotypes in an interesting way – some deepening and some denying, sometimes establishing new ones. In order to better understand the function of stereotypes in Kapor's painting of Belgrade, we will compare his descriptions of the capital of Serbia with the capital of Bosnia from the Sarajevo trilogy. The subject of our work will be treated with the rules of literary imagology, a science that originated within the framework of comparative literature, and its subject of research is the presentation of the Other in literature.