Robert Elsie

History of Albanian literature
2 vol.

UNESCO Collection of Representative Works
European Series

ISBN 0-88033-276-X
Social Science Monographs, Boulder
Columbia University Press, New York 1995
xv + 1054 pp.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Preface
   
• Note on Albanian pronunciation
   
• The Albanians and their language
  Facts and figures
  The structure of the language
   
• Early history of the Albanians
  Illyria to Byzantium
  The earliest references to the Albanians
   
• The birth of written literature in Albania
  The humanist traditions of the Renaissance
  The beginnings of writing in Albanian
   
• Early Albanian literature (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)
  Gjon Buzuku and the first Albanian book (1555)
  Lekë Matrënga and the Christian Doctrine (1592)
  The works of Pjetër Budi (1618-1621)
  Frang Bardhi and his Latin-Albanian dictionary (1635)
  Pjetër Bogdani and the Cuneus prophetarum (1685)
  Minor works of the seventeenth century
  Conclusion
   
• The splendour of the Orient. Eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Moslem literature after the Turkish conquest
  Historical and cultural setting
  Turkish-language writers of Albanian origin
  The literature of the Bejtexhinj
  Minor writers of the period
  Conclusion
   
• The heritage of Byzantium. Eighteenth and early nineteenth-century writing in the Orthodox tradition
  A schism of cultural identity
  Albanian in Greek and other scripts
  Dictionaries and grammars
  Conclusion
   
• ‘Sotto il sereno cielo italiano’ (Under the serene Italian sky) - Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
  Albanian emigration to Italy
  Arbëresh literature in the eighteenth century
  The remnants of Catholic writing in eighteenth-century Albania
  Girolamo De Rada and nineteenth-century Arbëresh literature
  Romantic poets: Francesco Santori, Gabriele Dara the Younger and Giuseppe Serembe
  Other Arbëresh writers of the nineteenth century
  The contribution of Arbëresh writers and scholars using Italian
   
• Allah’s Albanian acolytes. Moslem and Bektash literature 1850-1950
  The recondite art of the Bektash
  The waning of the Moslem tradition
   
• The Rilindja period. Literature of the Albanian national awakening
  The beginnings of national awareness (1830-1850)
  Scutarine Catholic literature of the mid-nineteenth century
  The Frashëri brothers and the Rilindja literature of romantic nationalism
  Southern Tosk literature under Greek cultural influence
  The northern Geg writers of Shkodër
  The struggle for education
  The rediscovery of oral literature
  The rise of Albanian journalism and publishing
  Minor figures of Rilindja literature
  Conclusion
   
• The currents of early twentieth-century Albanian literature to 1944
  Historical overview of the independence period
  The poets of transition: Andon Zako Çajupi, Ndre Mjeda and Asdreni
  Faik bey Konitza, Fan Noli and the American connection
  Gjergj Fishta, the voice of the nation
  Migjeni and Lasgush Poradeci, the harbingers of modernity
  Other Albanian verse before the communist takeover
  Ernest Koliqi, Mitrush Kuteli and the prose of the independence period
  The rise of Albanian theatre to 1944
  The cultural zenith of the mid-thirties
   
• Literature under Enver Hoxha (1944-1985) and the road back from isolation
  The historical and social context
  The onslaught of socialist realism. Post-war Albanian literature to 1961
  Ismail Kadare, the will to achieve
  Other prose writing from 1961 to the present
  Modern poetry in Albania
  Theatre in Albania from 1944 to the present
   
• Albanian literature in Kosovo
  The place of the Albanians in Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro
  The rise of Albanian prose in Kosovo
  Poetry on the Plain of the Blackbirds
  The development of Albanian theatre in Kosovo
   
• ‘Gjaku ynë i shprishur’ (Our scattered blood). Twentieth-century Albanian literature in Italy and in the diaspora
  Arbëresh literature and scholarship come of age
  Contemporary Arbëresh literature
  Albanian writers in the diaspora
   
• Chronology of Albanian literature
   
• Glossary of place names and technical terms
   
• List of illustrations
   
• Bibliography
   
• Index