Jovan Avakumović (poet)
Jovan Avakumović (,  – 1810), also known by his nickname Pašalija, was a Serbian poet, nobleman and lawyer. Life
Jovan was born in 1748 into the prominent family of Nikola Avakumović, a merchant of Szentendre and judge whom Emperor Leopold II named a nobleman in charters. He was schooled in Bratislava, Trnava, Wien and Leipzig. He was a lawyer of the Temišvar Eparchy. As a poet he was famed in his time and known as a representative of the Serbian folk poetry of the 18th century, even if he only wrote a few poems which were part of handwritten poem books. In 1775 he composed song Pašalija (), later also recorded by Avram Miletić. Avakumović died in 1810. As a poet Avakumović came to hold definite theories of purposes and values of poetics and orthography, which he set forth in poems collected after his death in Pesme Jovana Avakumovića (Poems of Jovan Avakumović). Besides Dositej Obradović, he was among the first to produce works in verse in Serbian vernacular, anticipating the 19th century language reforms of Vuk Karadžić. References

Sources
Rastko Istorija Srba

18th-century Serbian lawyers
18th-century Serbian nobility
19th-century Serbian nobility
1748 births
1810 deaths
Serbian male poets
People from Szentendre
Serbs of Hungary
Habsburg Serbs
18th-century Serbian writers
19th-century male writers
19th-century Serbian poets