SERBIAN ORTHODOX PRIESTS AND MONKS IN THE SERBIAN LITERATURE OF THE 18th AND 19th CENTURIES

The review points out the importance that Serbian priests and monks had in the creation of new Serbian literature (18th and 19th centuries): from the generation of Racani (from the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century), through Jovan Rajic, Dositej Obradovic and Petar II Petrovic Njegos, all the way to the three metropolitans Dorde Nikolajevic, Mihailo Jovanovic and Serafim Perovic. Special analytical attention is focused among them on Jovan Rajic, Dositej Obradovic and Petar II Petrovic Njegos, because they created the most significant and poetically most creative work. On the example of Dositej's works written in the vernacular: Life and Connections (1783-1788), as well as the Council of Common Sense (1784), and his patriotic verses: Song of the Deliverance of Serbia (1789), Song of the Insurrection of Serbia (1804) and Song of the beauties of Serbia (1807), pointed out the role and importance of this writer in the creation of new Serbian literature, as well as the entire Serbian patriotic poetry of the 19th century. Out of the entire Njegos's literary work, the philosophical-religious poem Luca mikrokozma (1845), the dramatic poem Gorski vijenac (1847), as well as short lyrical poems: Ode to the Sun Sung in the Moonless Night, Thought, Philosopher, Astronomer and Poet, which performed an important role in the poetic synthesis of pre-romantic and constituting romantic stylistic features in the Serbian literature of the first half of the 19th century, are specially underscored.