Functions of the Topos of Lika in Narrative Discourse – Lika as the original homeland of Branko Ćopić

Abstract

There are few writers who referred to their homeland as Branko Ćopić did. Although he learned about the topos of Lika from the stories of his mother and grandfather, Ćopoć in almost all interviews, letters and even his own works referred to Lika as his original homeland. With this fact, this paper moves in two directions: the first part analyzes Ćopić’s interviews and letters in which he talks about the topos of Lika as a homeland, while the second part of the paper presents interpretations of Lika’s motifs in Ćopić’s literary works. From all sources (both factual and fictional) it is evident that Lika, both as a geographical and as a motive term, represented the habitus of values that significantly determined the work of one of the greatest writers of South Slavic literature.