Original scientific paper
What Does the Old Croatian Book Teach Us
Zlata Šundalić
orcid.org/0000-0003-2039-9664
; Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilišta Josip Juraj Strossmayera u Osijeku, Osijek, Hrvatska
Abstract
The work “What does the old Croatian book teach us?” puts in the center of attention the Croatian national pre-revival book and its sub-literary genres (prayer books, collections of sermons, catechisms,…). Bearing in mind that these genres in their structure almost inevitably contain dedications and prefaces, this work interprets their messages from a modern view. This paper has three segments: in the first (Introduction) it is explained in which meaning is the syntagma “old Croatian book” used, how its research influenced the establishment of the Academy in the 19th century and how the Croatian national revivalists referred to it. It is well known that the writers of the so called elite literature often added commentaries, dedications and prefaces all in function of avoiding possible misunderstandings. The same was done by the writers of the so called folk literature, but the profession did not address that much attention to it, as in the case of elite literature. Therefore, in the second segment of this paper (The opening captions) research of the dedications and prefaces of the Croatian national pre-revival book is in the centre of attention. It is being researched whether the Croatian, that is Slavonian national pre-revival writers wondered about the problem of national identity, whether they questioned the elements of Croatian national identity, whether they thought about the writer-reader relationship, the writer-critic relationship, whether they deliberated linguistic politics, how did they refer themselves towards literary heritage, how towards works from other cultural backgrounds. The results of this research are summarized in the third segment (Conclusions) and they consist of the following – authors mostly used the dedications to express their respect towards religious characters, and towards highly positioned church and secular functionaries, while in prefaces authors more often addressed their current social and literary-cultural everyday life.
Keywords
national pre-revival literature; folk literature; dedication; preface
Hrčak ID:
150014
URI
Publication date:
10.11.2015.
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