The Poetics of Slavdom

Book excerpt: 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 Mazuranić (1814-1890) and Petar II Petrović Njegos (1813-1851), who was Prince-Bishop of Montenegro from 1830-1851 - dealt with the Southern Slavs' relationship to Islam in their greatest poetic works, The Death of Smail-agha Čengić and The Mountain Wreath, respectively.