Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 42 No. 1, 2016.
Original scientific paper
DINKO RANJINA AS A LITERARY CRITIC
Tomislav Bogdan
orcid.org/0000-0003-3353-6509
; Faculty of philosophy in Zagreb, University of Zagreb
Abstract
The article presents views on literature by Ragusan Renaissance poet Dinko Ranjina (1536-1607). Literary criticism is here understood more broadly than usual, to include poetic ruminations of the early modern authors, their views on the nature of literature and especially their thoughts on the value of particular literary works or oeuvres. Special attention is paid to the prose dedication in Ranjina’s book Pjesni razlike (Miscellaneous Poems) (1563) which is in part a translation of a Platonic treatise by Bernardo Tasso Ragionamento della poesia (1562). This introduction contains relevant poetic arguments, and the most famous of them show Ranjina establishing his position with regard to his own literary tradition, discussing its beginnings, and justifying his decision to write in the vernacular by appealing to the examples of Šiško Menčetić and Džore Držić. The article reveals that besides Bernardo Tasso’s treatise, Ranjina had translated from at least one other text – Latin biography of Oppian, Greek poet from the 2nd century. The article also offers an analysis of several Ranjina’s poems in which the author, using metalyric, protocritical utterances, comments on the literary creation and evaluates literary texts by other authors. Among these poems of particular prominence is a cycle of nine grave poems which Ranjina dedicates to his illustrious predecessors and co-citizens Menčetić and Držić. In them he brings forth generalized and most frequently occasional praises of the two oeuvres, but there also appear certain stylistical and generic characterizations which show that Ranjina was well aware of the differences between the two lyric poetics. One of the aims of Ranjina’s reflections on his native literary tradition must have been an attempt to establish a Ragusan literary canon and to participate in the formation of a separate Ragusan cultural identity.
Keywords
Dinko Ranjina; Ragusan Renaissance literature; Platonism; metalyric; protocriticism; Džore Držić; Šiško Menčetić
Hrčak ID:
158237
URI
Publication date:
9.5.2016.
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