Les comédies de Jovan Sterija Popović ; n°4 ; vol.73, pg 805-813

Revue des études slaves - Année 2001 - Volume 73 - Numéro 4 - Pages 805-813
THE COMEDIES OF JOVAN STERIJA POPOVIĆ Jovan Sterija Popović (1806-1856), a Serbian writer born in Voivodina, is very famous in Yugoslavia, especially for his thirteen comédies. In France Popović is unknown, and his works were never translated into French. This book is the first one entirely devoted to Popović's comédies. The first part includes biographical information, defines his place in Serbian literature, and discusses his other works: novels, poems, and historical dramas. The second part is devoted to the genesis of his comédies, and shows how J. S. Popović created this genre in Serbian literature: intertextuality (cultural références, literary antécédents, in particular Molière), and autointertextuality. The third part reviews the eighty characters in his comédies. Their names are examined, and a classification based on identity (falše, destab- ilized, in transition, etc.) as a criterion is proposed. Then their speech is observed: these comédies are a true linguistic 'Tower of Babel'. The fourth part deals with theater techniques: the secondary text (which leads to a discussion of the very notion of 'didascalia'); the main text (dialogue, monologue, and asides); the structures of the action (from exposition to dénouement); the spatial and temporal structures; and lastly the comic dimension with verbal and non-verbal comic devices. The approach is not chronological, but the study reveals the development of J. S. Popović as an author who first of ail focused on his readers, then on his audience, and in his later plays on both.
9 pages