Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 40 No. 1, 2014.
Original scientific paper
JUR NIJEDNA NA SVIT VILA – A NEW READING
Tomislav Bogdan
orcid.org/0000-0003-3353-6509
; Faculty of philosophy in Zagreb, University of Zagreb
Abstract
The paper offers a new perspective on the Jur nijedna na svit vila (No Other Nymph Upon This Earth) by Hanibal Lucić (1485–1553), the most famous love poem, and perhaps even lyrical poem, of old Croatian literature, and probably one of the most important poems in entire Croatian literature. In Vila, after the introductory summary praise of the lady’s beauty, eight octaves systematically and flatteringly describe individual traits of the lady’s appearance, from top to bottom (hair, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, lips, teeth, neck, chest, fingers, walk and posture). Each of the stanzas as a rule is dedicated to one element of woman’s anatomy, while the poem ends with yet another summary praise of the lady’s beauty as well as supplication to god to preserve her in eternal youth. The paper brings forth a hypothesis that we are dealing with an adaptation of a descriptive technique characteristic of vernacular literary Middle Ages, which also exists in Italian chivalric epics of the early Renaissance from which it moved to lyric poetry. The technique consists of a description which is systematic and detailed, always starting from top to bottom; the parts of body described are predetermined as well as attributes and rhetorical figures used in the description. Lucić probably took it over from chivalric epic, either directly or through an older lyric mediation, and to a certain extent adapted it to the Petrarchistic sublime style, but his non-Petrarchistic origin nonetheless remains obvious. The last part of the paper explains why Ariosto’s Orlando Enraged, more precisely the description of Alcina’s beauty from the 7th canto, could have been the most probable impetus for the creation of Lucić’s poem.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
122990
URI
Publication date:
30.4.2014.
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