Original scientific paper
LJUBIĆ’S HISTORY OF LITERATURE AND CROATS IN THE BURGENLAND-CROATIAN SPEAKING AREA
Andrea Sapunar Knežević
; Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb
Abstract
In “Ogledalo književne poviesti jugoslavjanske na podučavanje mladeži”
(book II, 1869) Šime Ljubić, Croatian literary historian, considers
Croatian authors from the area of west Hungary and Lower Austria,
today Burgenland-Croatian area, as kajkavian writers and calls them
“literature written in the kajkavian dialect”. Ljubić puts kajkavian and
Croatian literature of West-Hungarian area under the same name, especially
because he thinks that Croatian authors from the West-Hungarian
region write the same for Kajkavians, but Hungarian Kajkavians. With
genre, content and style characteristics Burgenland-Croatian literature is
close to a part of kajkavian literature of the 17th and 18th century. According
to those criteria we could unite them into a whole, but that cannot be
done as far as language is concerned. Burgenland Croats use chakavian
and stokavian dialect, and there is a small number of Kajkavians among
them. In the entire area, which is considered as Burgenland in dialectal
sense, there is only one speech of two villages Vedešin and Umok (Hidegség
and Fertőhomok) in the West Hungary near Šapron, which could be considered
kajkavian, although it is not typically kajkavian. The most numerous
are chakavian speeches and chakavian dialect or ikavian-ekavian
speeches of the North and Central Burgenland became the basis of
Burgenland-Croatian (standard) language. An answer to the question
why Šime Ljubić considers Croats of West-Hungarian region and Lower
Austria as Hungarian Kajkavians should be looked for in the fact that
the first results of more serious and systematic analyses of language and
culture of West-Hungarian and Lower-Austrian Croats were published
right after Ljubić’s “Ogledalo književne poviesti jugoslavjanske” (1869).
Sources, which Ljubić used the most, were two books: “Bibliografia hrvatska”
from 1860 written by Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski and “Geschichte
der südslawischen Literatur (Geschichte der ilirischen and kroatischen
Literatur)” written by Paul Josef Šafařík, published in Prague in 1865.
Ljubić took over data from the mentioned literature, mostly without having
checked their correctness.
Ljubić’s piece of work stands in the very beginning of the Croatian literary
history and it should be considered in the context of time in which it was
made. His aim was “to clear the way” to successors who will further build
literary history. Although his work in some of its propositions is not relevant
to the current literary history, it is the best witness of its beginnings
and it is important base of further development of literary history.
Keywords
literary history; Šime Ljubić; Burgenland Croats; kajkavian literature.
Hrčak ID:
229976
URI
Publication date:
14.12.2009.
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