Table of contents - The University of Texas at Dallas

ALBANIAN LITERATURE
By Peter R. Prifti
The Ottoman Empire, which ruled Albania
from the 15th to the early 20th century,
prohibited publications in Albanian, an edict that
became a serious obstacle to the development
of literature in that language. Books in Albanian
were rare until the late 19th century.
The oldest example of writing in Albanian
is a book-length manuscript on theology,
philosophy, and history by Teodor Shkodrani
that dates from 1210; it was discovered in the
late 1990s in the Vatican archives. Among
other early examples of written Albanian
are a baptismal formula (1462) and the
book Meshari (1555; “The Liturgy” or “The
Missal”) by the Roman Catholic prelate Gjon
Buzuku. The publication in 1635 of the first
Albanian dictionary was a milestone in the
history of Albanian literature. The author of
the Dictionarium latino-epiroticum (“Latin-
Albanian Dictionary”) was Frang Bardhi, a
Catholic bishop.
The earliest works of Albanian literature
were written by Catholic clerics, whose ties
with the Vatican enabled them to circumvent
Turkish restrictions by publishing their works
outside Albania, mostly in Rome. The earliest
books, from the mid-16th to the mid-18th
century, were mostly religious and didactic in
character. A change occurred with the advent
of Romanticism and the nationalist movements
of the 18th and 19th centuries. The range
of genres broadened to encompass folklore
and linguistics, and books of a Romantic and
patriotic nature also emerged.
The first writers to cultivate the new genres
were Albanians who had migrated centuries
earlier to Sicily and southern Italy. The Arbëresh
writers, as they are commonly called, profited
from the absence of state-imposed restrictions
in Italy and published freely to preserve and
celebrate their ethnic Albanian heritage. (The
term Arbëresh denotes both their dialect and
their ethnic origins; it is derived from the word
Arbëria, the name by which Albania was known
during the Middle Ages.) Foremost among
Arbëresh writers was Jeronim (Girolamo) de
Rada, regarded by some critics as the finest
Romantic poet in the Albanian language.
His major work, best known by its Albanian
title Këngët e Milosaos (1836; “The Songs
of Milosao”), is a Romantic ballad infused
with patriotic sentiments. De Rada was also
the founder of the first Albanian periodical,
Fiámuri Arbërit (“The Albanian Flag”), which
was published from 1883 to 1888. Other
Arbëresh writers of note are Francesco Santori,
a novelist, poet, and playwright; Dhimitër
Kamarda (Demetrio Camarda), a philologist
and folklorist; Zef (Giuseppe) Serembe, a poet;
Gavril (Gabriele) Dara (the younger), a poet
and savant; and Zef Skiroi (Giuseppe Schirò), a
poet, publicist, and folklorist.
Literary activity gathered momentum in
the wake of the formation of the Albanian
League of Prizren, the first Albanian nationalist
organization. The league, founded in 1878,
spurred Albanians to intensify their efforts to
win independence from the Ottoman Empire,
an event that would occur in 1912. Albanians in
exile — in Constantinople (Istanbul); Bucharest,
Romania; Sofia, Bulgaria; Cairo; and Boston
— formed patriotic and literary societies to
promote the propagation of literature and culture
as instruments for gaining independence. The
national motif became the hallmark of the
literature of this period, known as Rilindja
(“Renaissance”), and writers of the time came to
be known collectively as Rilindas.
The spirit of the Albanian Renaissance
found expression, above all, in the work of
Translation Review 29