Macedonian literature

Macedonian literature (Macedonian: македонска книжевност) begins with the Ohrid Literary School which was established in Ohrid (nowadays Republic of Macedonia) in 886. These first written works in the dialects of the Macedonian recension were religious. The school was established by St. Clement of Ohrid in the First Bulgarian Empire. The Macedonian recension at that time was part of the Old Church Slavonic and it didn't represent one regional dialect but a generalized form of early eastern South Slavic. The standardization of the Macedonian language in the 20 century provided good ground for further development of the modern Macedonian literature and this period is the richest one in the history of the literature itself.

The Macedonian language was not officially recognized until the establishment of Macedonia as a constituent republic of communist Yugoslavia in 1946. Krste Petkov Misirkov in his Za Makedonskite raboti (1903; English: On the Macedonian Matters) and in the literary periodical Vardar (established 1905) helped to create the foundations of ethnic Macedonian language and literature. These efforts were continued after World War I by Kosta Racin, who wrote mainly poetry in Macedonian and propagated its use through the literary journals of the 1930s. Racin's poems in Beli mugri (1939; White Dawns), which include many elements of oral folk poetry, were prohibited by the government of pre-World War II Yugoslavia because of their realistic and powerful portrayal of the exploited and impoverished Macedonian people. Some writers, such as Kole Nedelkovski, worked and published abroad because of political pressure.

The Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts divides Macedonian literature into three large periods, which are subdivided into additional ones. The periods of the Macedonian literature are:

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