Abstract

The article introduces the Croatian Biographical Lexicon, the main Croatian national biographical science project, published by the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography, with emphasis on its literary-historic elements. Considering that the project was started in the late 1970s and continues up to the present, now being only halfway, it has developed and changed under the influence of major social and political changes that were pivotal in shaping the Croatian national self-concept. Among such changes, we will analyse changes in literary biographies that were conditioned by the wider context, and using characteristic examples we will describe changes in the approach and discourse that have spilled over from the social context into the biographical. Considering the canonical and encyclopaedic character of the Lexicon, the methodological and interpretative changes it has undergone testify to paradigmatic changes in Croatian society from the 1970s up to the present. The national self-concept is linked directly to notions of patriotism, especially considering the synthetic character of the Lexicon, whose pronouncements are considered well-founded and authenticated opinions about a person and his/her work. In light of this, changes in the methodology of biography as an  encyclopaedic genre testify to changes in the self-constitution of the nation. The biographies of authors in the Croatian Biographical Lexicon are a double mirror: on the one hand they reflect changes in the assessment of certain persons and works in literary historiography as well as their status in the national literary canon in general, while on the other hand a biography, as the final canonization of an author, contributes to the shaping of his/her status in national literary historiography.