The Concept Of Dissimilitude In Teaching Literature

Abstract

This article focuses on the presence of the concept of dissimilitude in a selection of literary texts for children prescribed by the syllabi in Croatia and Serbia. The comparative analysis is based on providing a list of texts for the first cycle of education in the two syllabi through a conceptually-based (text-transcendent) observation of the concept of dissimilitude, as well as a content-based (text-immanent) analysis of the presence of dissimilitude in these texts in its broadest sense.

In the literary texts prescribed by the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Serbia, the field of dissimilitude thematization can largely be attributed to the nature of the literary work itself, rather than the curricular or conceptually-based education policy behind the current syllabi. The paper presents results of the analyses of the two syllabi that are conceptually quite different. Furthermore, the two syllabi contain almost no common literary works.

The aim of this paper is to compare the educational strategies of teaching literature in the two countries of common historical, literary, cultural and linguistic heritage – Croatia, which is a full member of the EU and Serbia, which is in the process of EU accession, by analyzing the presence of the concept of dissimilitude in a selection of literary texts.