SOURCE: Matejic, Mateja. “Elements of Folklore in Andrić's Na Drini ćuprija.” Canadian Slavonic Papers: An Inter-Disciplinary Quarterly Devoted to the Soviet Union 20 (1978): 348-57.

In the following essay, Matejic finds that Andrić's use of elements of folklore in his works goes beyond adaptation and is instead a full-fledged “literarization” of traditional folk stories.

If the presence of folklore elements in the prose of two of the greatest Serbian writers, Petar Petrović-Njegoš and Ivo Andrić, is no more than a coincidence, it is a very interesting one. A close study of their works, however, reveals that the presence of folklore in them is not incidental and that, in fact, there is a definite correlation between their use of folklore and the high artistry of their works.

The folklore elements in Andrić's works are so clearly evident that they cannot be overlooked even by the common reader...