Filologija, No. 82, 2024.
Review article
https://doi.org/DOI https://dx.doi.org/10.21857/yq32oh8le9
Correspondence of Ivan Dežman and Fran Kurelac. The new contributions of the knowledge of Ivan Dežman's literary work
Maja Polić
; Zavod za povijesne i društvene znanosti u Rijeci HAZU
Ivona Smolčić
Abstract
Fran Kurelac (Bruvno, 1811 – Zagreb, 1874) was a Croatian philologist, writer, and both a theorist and the leader of the Rijeka Philological School. National history remembers him as a high school teacher in Rijeka (1849 – 1853), where, despite difficult political and social circumstances, he taught the Croatian language, introducing Rijeka's students to the spirit of the glorious past of their nation and instructing them on linguistic particularities. One of his most famous students was the writer and politician Ivan Dežman (Rijeka, 1841 – Zagreb, 1873). Although Dežman spent most of his life in Zagreb, his legacy also marks the cultural history of his native Rijeka, where he began to shape patriotic and literary thoughts. He was the author of many popular scientific articles, as well as dictionaries of medical terminology, romantic epics, lyrical and epic poems, and stories. This paper aims to shed more light on the relationship between Kurelac and Dežman, as significant figures in the social, cultural, and intellectual life of the nineteenth century, through an examination of fifteen letters sent by Dežman to Kurelac from Vienna to Đakovo and Zagreb between 1861 and 1865. Besides providing information significant for reconstructing lesser-known historical and social events and the linguistic views of the teacher and the student, the sources contain the names of individuals who marked Rijeka's, as well as national (literary) everyday life of that time. Additionally, as the author of the letters, Dežman reveals previously unknown details about the process of writing and publishing his most famous literary work, »Smiljan i Koviljka«, thus shedding new light on his literary significance, which has been relatively underestimated in literary history.
Keywords
Fran Kurelac; Ivan Dežman; književnost; pisma; Rijeka
Hrčak ID:
320222
URI
Publication date:
23.8.2024.
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