The Small-Town Globalism of Ivo Andrić

Abstract

This study situates the works of Ivo Andrić at the intersection of world literature and postcolonial studies. It argues that, rather than being opposed as two mutually exclusive critical paradigms, the two need to be tactfully combined in order to account for the artist’s treatment of the prolonged subjugation undergone by the former Ottoman province of Bosnia. Two contradictory trends are observed. Andrić represents Bosnian small towns as places of symbolic resistance and perseverance. His local themes and language undermine the hegemonic presence of the empire, and invite a reading through a postcolonial lens. At the same time, a strong cosmopolitan current runs through the same narratives, and shows a paradoxical urge of the artist to extend his local setting into the global and intercultural spheres. Andrić stages the world as a multifarious and enigmatic whole – a viewpoint that embraces world literature as its aesthetic and political shrine.