Basne

Until the Eighteenth century the fable has known all over Europe a submerged life, arising in the pages of individual writers as rhetorical ornament in the preachers’ sermons. Only during the Enlightenment the aesopian tradition experiences, within the Croatian and Serbian enviroment, a sudden bloom connected to an awareness of the huge potential of the old didactic genre. In particoular, it experiences a substantial transformation creating a new genre in serbian panorama. It’s possible to understand the centrality of the fable plot as a means of expression, but with the Basne (1788), the narrative is made lively by deep characterization of the characters (with a psychological deepening, unknown to Aesop), heightened dialogue and dramatic element. The value of this collection, however, is to be found mainly in its ideological content, the transmission of ethical, political and philosophycal message, which removes Serbian culture from a secular isolation and reconciles it to western thinking and the enlightment values.