Albanian National Awakening - Literary Revival

Literary Revival

Albanian intellectuals in the late nineteenth century began devising a single, standard Albanian literary language and making demands that it be used in schools. In Constantinople in 1879, Sami Frashëri founded a cultural and educational organization, the Society for the Printing of Albanian Writings, whose membership comprised Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox Albanians. Naim Frashëri, the most-renowned Albanian poet, joined the society and wrote and edited textbooks. Albanian émigrés in Bulgaria, Egypt, Italy, Romania, and the United States supported the society's work. The Greeks, who dominated the education of Orthodox Albanians, joined the Turks in suppressing the Albanians' culture, especially Albanian-language education. In 1886 the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople threatened to excommunicate anyone found reading or writing Albanian, and priests taught that God would not understand prayers uttered in Albanian.

As was common to the various movements of Romantic nationalism throughout Europe, Albanian intellectuals were looking for a national myth of origin, preferably one establishing a national identity traced to a people of remote antiquity. At first, Albanian nationalist writers opted for the Pelasgians as the forefathers of the Albanians. But as the national movement matured, the Pelasgians were ousted by the Illyrian theory of Albanian origins, which could claim some support in scholarship. The Illyrian descent theory soon became one of the pillars of Albanian nationalism, especially because it could provide evidence of continuity of Albanian presence both in Kosovo and in southern Albania, i.e. areas that were subjected to ethnic conflicts between Albanians, Serbs and Greeks. Albanians claimed that Alexander the great was Pelasgian - Illyrian - Albanian and that Ancient Greek culture (and thus the result of the Hellenistic civilisation) had spread by Albanians. Macedonians were considered forefathers of the Albanians. Ancient Greek gods were seen as "Albanian" as well.

The literary revival of the Albanian language had an effect on the distribution of given names in Albania. Traditionally, Albanian given names had universally been Christian, i.e. loaned from Greek hagiography or from the Bible. It was only with the Rilindja that given names were taken from the native Albanian vocabulary. Examples are mostly female given names, such as Lule "flower". This tendency becomes extreme in Communist Albania after 1944, where it was the regime's declared doctrine to oust Christian or Islamic given names. Ideologically acceptable names were listed in the Fjalor me emra njerëzish (1982). These could be native Albanian words like Flutur "butterfly", ideologically communist ones like Proletare, or "Illyrian" ones compiled from epigraphy, e.g. from the necropolis at Dyrrhachion excavated in 1958-60.