The Danube Archipelago: the hydropoetics of river islands

Zoric, Vladimir

Abstract

This essay looks at the Danubian river islands in the postcolonial memory of South Slavs. These river islands are liminal in multiple ways: hydrologically, because they are situated between the two riverbanks; geographically, because they emerged between the upper and the lower course of the river; historically, because they were a contested border zone between the Habsburg and the Ottoman empires. The essay situates this group of islands within a broader context of the sundry colonial discourses on these rivers, explains their regular omission in travelogues and narrative fiction of the Western and South Slav writers, and discusses their emergence as precarious sanctuaries balanced between the colonizer and the colonized as well as between the literary and visual media.

Citation

Zoric, V. (2019). The Danube Archipelago: the hydropoetics of river islands. In D. Göttsche (Ed.), Memory and postcolonial studies: synergies and new directions (513-537). Peter Lang International Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.3726/b14024

• Online Publication Date: Jun 11, 2019
• Publication Date: May 17, 2019
• Deposit Date: Oct 20, 2020
• Publisher: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers
• Pages: 513-537
• Series Title: Cultural memories
• Book Title: Memory and postcolonial studies: synergies and new directions
• ISBN: 9781788744782
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3726/b14024
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4917969
• Publisher URL: https://www.peterlang.com/view/9781788744805/chapter-22.xhtml