Filologija, No. 14, 1986.
Original scientific paper
'Acta croatica' as a subject of study in literary medievalistic
Eduard Hercigonja
Abstract
The interest in Glagolitic (old Croatian) and Old Bosnian (western cyrillic) written lego-historic documents characterises a difficult period in the Croatian history of the 19th century: the time following the collapse in the ideals of the Illyrian movement, and the stormy year of 1848. The movement for a nationalistic-romantic idealised folk history, and the search for sources to promote its acquaintance and study, gave a specific form to the resistance to germanisation and Viennese centralism, during the era of Bach's absolutism.
In 1851, Ivan Kukuljević published the 'Archives of Yugoslav History', wherein the most significant Croatian lego-historical texts are presented with commentary. In 1863. Kukuljević's major anthology of Glagolitic, Old Bosnian Cyrillic and Latin documents, 'Acta croatica' (writings from 1288-1599) was published. All these publishing activities made it possible for the young Vartroslav Jagić to publish his 'Literary History of the Croatian and Serbian Nationalities' (1867) using historical and legal documents as a subject of study in literary history, which is still considered topical by many today. This work was among the first in the Slavic world (indeed, in Europe), to offer examples of interpretation, and to give valuable documented judgments about these works as literary-aesthetic achievements and as integral portion of the medieval literary corpus.
Jagić's approach remained unchallenged in Croatian literary historiography for an entire century. It was not until the 20th century, in the 1970's, and then of course on a qualitatively different level, that Jagić's interpretation of Croatian lego-historical writings was challenged ,in the works of M. Ratković, J. Bratulić, I. Slamnig, E. Hercigonja, D. Malić and others. Some of these texts, moreover, are found in anthologies of Croatian poetry.
Along the lines of such an approach, in another section of this work, the author draws attention to the relatively rare (i.e. rarer than in Serbian medieval diplomatic texts) examples of 'arenga's: Croatian Glagolitic documents. As an element in diplomatic forms, most often in public legal records, forming an introduction to the middle section of what is known as the document corpus, the 'arenga' often represents a written text with literary design, its purpose being to raise the level of style and thereby give the legal act a ceremonious tone. This is demonstrated through the analysis and interpretation of arenga's from various documents most of which originated in the office of the ducal house of Francopan.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
184050
URI
Publication date:
15.12.1986.
Visits: 1.963 *