| Abstract [eng] |
One of the most popular authors in contemporary Finnish literature is Pajtim Statovci. Although his work is widely read and discussed in various cultural magazines and book festivals, the amount of academic research done on his oeuvre remains small. At the same time, scholars rarely choose to apply specific literary theories to his texts and tend to view his works in the context of migrant literature. This Master's thesis analyses Statovci's first three books from the perspective of Literary Animal Studies. This analysis includes the novels: “My Cat Yugoslavia” (in Finnish, Kissani Yugoslavia, 2014), “Crossing” (Tiranan sydän, 2016), and “Bolla” (2019). This study aims to investigate literary animals' characteristics, behavior, and functions in these texts, attempting to move away from traditional literary interpretations. Using the types of animal functions and their relation to the literary environment identified by Frederike Middelhoff, Sebastian Schönbeck, Roland Borgards, and Catrina Gersdorf from a Zoopoetic perspective, together with the ideas of Literary Animal Studies, the aim of this analysis was to investigate the motifs of the literary animals, their characteristics, and their behavior that appear in the work of Statovci, utilizing the literary analysis tools. The analysis of these novels reveals that literary animals in Statovci's work take various forms and shapes: from those that act as characters with similar characteristics to humans, to those that do not appear much in the text of the novel, but exist within its narrative structure. In “My Cat Yugoslavia”, the cat operates to a large extent in the human world, as it is able to speak, express itself, sing, and wear human clothes; at the same time, its feline appearance and wild behavior prevent it from being treated as a fully human species. In the same novel, the snake is treated as an ambassador for other animals in a Zoopoetic approach, since a large part of the narrative is concerned with the poor breeding and living conditions. The animals in the novel Crossing – the horse, the eagle, and, to a small extent, the lion - are present in the metatext, in the stories, tales, and legends of Bujar's dad. Most often, animal imagery comes up as the boy travels around the world, with ever-implicit memories of his country and his life before his father's death so that animals can be seen as helpers in the search for identity. In the novel “Bolla”, the snake-like monster of the same name does not appear in the text itself, but in the structure of the text: in the title, in the vocabulary entry before the beginning of the novel, and the short stories about God and the Devil. In this case, the mythological serpent acts as an invisible force influencing the decisions and search for identity of the characters in the novel. The results reveal that various animals in Statovci's work can have different interpretations from traditional anthropomorphic ones. The aim of analyzing them ― beyond such boundaries shows how they participate and contribute to the writer's creative process. At the same time, the attempt to categorize them within a chosen typology poses challenges, as some animals can easily succumb to other interpretations. In contrast, others remain at the level of metaphor or symbol, especially when their meaning is not further developed in the novel. |
