Literature
The first literary works written in the region are ten centuries old, and the first Montenegrin book was printed five hundred years ago. The first state-owned printing press (Printing House of Crnojevići), was located in Cetinje in 1494, where the first South Slavic book was printed the same year (Oktoih). A number of medieval manuscripts, dating from the 13th century, are kept in the Montenegrin monasteries.
The coastal Montenegro (called for centuries Venetian Albania) was heavily influenced by Renaissance Italy, mainly in literature. Ludovico Pasquali, Giovanni Bona de Boliris, and Giovanni Polizza were the main representatives in those centuries.
On the substratum of traditional oral folk epic poetry, authors like Petar II Petrović Njegoš have created in the last two centuries their own expression. His epic Gorski Vijenac (The Mountain Wreath), written in the Montenegrin vernacular, presents the central point of the Montenegrin culture, for many surpassing in importance even the Bible.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Montenegro
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“[The] attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and ... often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.”
—Carson McCullers (1917–1967)
“I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don’t have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)