Naslov
History, Politics and Wars in Croatian Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Epic: An Overview

Autori
Dukić, Davor

Izvornik
Des épopées de la première modernité (1500-1800), de la Mitteleuropa aux Indes occidentales : pour un panorama

Vrsta, podvrsta
Ostale vrste radova, ostali članci/prilozi

Godina
2020

Ključne riječi
Croatian Early Modern Literature ; historical epic poems ; classical epic tradition ; chronicles in verse

Sažetak
In the 16th and 17th centuries, eight longer epic texts on historical, war and political events were written in Croatian literary idioms. Two epics originated in the 16th century and six in the 17th century ; five of them were written in Dubrovnik’s Štokavian literary language (A. Sasin, Dž. Gundulić, J. Palmotić Dionorić, P. Bogašinović, P. Kanavelić), two in Čakavian (B. Karnarutić, J. Baraković), and one in the idiom of the Ozalj literary-linguistic circle (P. Zrinski). Half of the corpus was published in its time, and all the texts that remained in manuscripts until modern times belong to Dubrovnik literature. A relatively small number of shorter epic poems, mostly composed in the 16th century, have been preserved on the same themes from the same period. This genre would only gain greater popularity in the 18th century, under the influence of oral epics (A. Kačić Miošić and his followers). Two types of texts can be observed in the analyzed corpus: a) chronicle in verse, with the predominance of the historical world, with some traits of the Virgilian epic or other procedures of literary aestheticization (B. Karnarutić, A. Sasin, P. Bogašinović) ; b) Tassian Baroque historical epic in the Virgilian tradition, with three thematic worlds: historical, romantic and eschatological (Dž. Gundulić, P. Zrinski, J. Palmotić Dionorić, P. Kanavelić). Juraj Baraković’s epic, with its complex structure, does not fit into these two types and represents a special, genre-indeterminate case. In the 18th century, only Joso Krmpotić’s epic Katarine II. I Jose II. put u Krim (The Journey of Catherine II and Joseph II to Crimea, Vienna 1788) will retain some external features of Tassian epic, while other longer narrative works in verse on political/war themes will follow the poetics of chronicles in verse (J. Pavišević, B. Bošnjak, J. Maljevac). The following historical/political events are thematized in the epic texts of the 16th and 17th centuries: the conquest of Dalmatia by the Hungarian king Coloman (beginning of the 12th century) (P. Kanavelić) ; the Battle of Mohách in 1526 (an anonymous sixteenth century epic poem) the Siege of Malta in 1565 (an anonymous sixteenth century epic poem) ; the Siege of Szigetvár in 1566 (B. Karnarutić, an anonymous sixteenth century epic poem, P. Zrinski) ; the siege of Zadar during the War of Cyprus (1571-1573) (J. Baraković) ; the Battle of Sisak in 1593 and the events of the Long Turkish War (1593-1606) (A. B. Sasin, three anonymous sixteenth century epic poems), and the Battle of Khotyn in 1621 and the overthrow of Sultan Osman II in 1622 (Dž. Gundulić) ; the Great Dubrovnik Earthquake in 1667 (J. Palmotić Dionorić) ; the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683 and the events of the Great Turkish War (1683–1699) (P. Bogašinović). A major historical event that is not thematized in the Croatian epic production of its time is the Cretan War (1645-1669), which had a secondary theatre in Dalmatia. This deficiency would be compensated in the 18th century by Andrija Kačić Miošić, who will describe the events of the Cretan War in a number of poems of his work Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga (Pleasant Conversation of Slavic People, Venice 1756, 1759). At the end of the 18th century, a large number of epic texts about the Austro-Turkish War (1788-1791) were written and, for the most part, published (J. Krmpotić, J. Maljevac, B. Bošnjak, A. Ivanošić, Đ. Ferić, P. Bašić), so this war will remain the most frequently thematized historical event in Croatian early modern epic. Politics is a common theme of all the epic texts analyzed here, but the degree of its emancipation from other thematized fields of human activity and thought, above all from Christian morality, varies greatly from text to text. Three general cases can be distinguished: a) the subordination of the political sphere to the eschatological one (B. Karnarutić, J. Baraković, P. Bogašinović, P. Kanavelić) ; b) an emancipation of politics without deeper reflection (A. B. Sasin, J. Palmotić Dionorić) ; c) politics as an independent and reflected topic (Dž. Gundulić). In epic texts of historical and political themes, value-colored (ideological) statements, auto- and hetero-images are inevitable. As expected, all the texts analyzed here except Kanavelić’s epic contain more or less pronounced anti-Turkish statements. Therefore, even more interesting is appearance of other value identifications, such as selective Slavophilism by Dž. Gundulić or potentially subversive Hungarophilia by J. Baraković and P. Kanavelić. Finally, the analysis of epic texts, while taking into account relevant literary-historical facts, can reconstruct the intentional social function of the respective text. After all, the social function of the epic is closely related to the aforementioned types of epic text. Two dominant and one somewhat secondary but culturally-historically important function can be observed here. The dominant reporting function occurs in the chronicles in verse and in most sixteenth century short epic poems. This function would dominate in Croatian epics of the 18th century, when epic texts were often a substitute for newspapers. On the other hand, the aesthetic function dominates in Baroque historical epics. In both types of epic texts, a kind of diplomatic-pragmatic function sometimes appears, which is signaled by dedications to prominent political figures, such as foreign rulers. Such texts, as potential literary gifts, necessarily contain a dose of artificiality/aesthetics as well as panegyric parts related to the addressee (Dž. Gundulić, P. Bogašinović, P. Kanavelić).

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija, Književnost

POVEZANOST RADA