hrvatski

Kritika "evolucionističkih" narativa o genezi starohrvatskih pasionskih prikazanja

Rad je kritika "evolucionističkih" narativa i nastanak hrvatskih srednjovjekovnih prikazanja.

pasionska prikazanja ; srednjovjekovna hrvatska drama ; srednjovjekovna vernakularna književnost

This paper challenges the narratives which seek to explain the origin of medieval Croatian Passion plays in ‘evolutionary’ terms. Most scholars holding those views rely on the positivist research of N. Kolumbić, who sought to prove the evolution by tracking down the same octosyllabic couplets in various genres of Passion literature. While nowadays some Croatian philologists interpret Kolumbić’s research as a proof of the indigenous origin of the genre, in this paper I demonstrate that his own theory is mostly trying to make a case for the indigenous and gradual development of the surviving texts in Croatian Passion corpus, which renders the aforementioned genre-related use of his argument misleading. Furthermore, I argue against Kolumbić’s argument which treats the episodic emergence of the same verses in texts which belong to various genres as signs of their shared ancestry. Considering the “variance” of medieval poetry in Croatian vernacular and simultaneous existence of multiple Passion genres, I suggest that many of the similarities tracked down by Kolumbić can be better explained as results of attempts to creatively recast the widespread topoi and set- pieces i