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: Montenegrin Culture
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)