Original scientific paper
LITERARY-HISTORICAL SURVEY OF VERSE AND PROSE EPISTLES IN THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN POETRY FROM THE ANTIQUITY TO THE RENAISSANCE
Dubravka Brezak-Stamać
; XV. gimnazija, Zagreb
Abstract
The paper offers the reader a survey of epistle writers, from the old Roman literature to the European Renaissance literature. It aims to verify the mediating role of Roman literature between the artistic writings of the Greek civilization and the humanist European literatures in the 14th to 16th centuries, when European humanists discovered the "classicality" of manuscripts through the letters of Cicero, Horace, Ovid, Seneca, Pliny the Younger. Furthermore, following the path
of Croatian Renaissance literature will show its linguistic unity, opening up to the languages of both the Italian humanist Renaissance and the old Roman literatures. The chronological overview includes especially those writers who served as model to Croatian renaissance poets, above all to epistle writers, the Croatian humanist poets of the Quattrocento. The final part of the paper shows one of Petrarch's epistles and its interpretation. It tries to demonstrate the most popular poetic procedures characteristic of verse epistles (imaginary communication, lyrical and introspective comments on the epistle-writers own inner world, public and private features of the
epistles within the chosen theme and motifs).
Keywords
verse epistle; prose epistle; epistulae; diatribe; letter topoi; philophronesis; letter as conversation
Hrčak ID:
98686
URI
Publication date:
8.3.2013.
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