Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21857/m3v76t64xy
Religious Discourse on Virginity in Mavro Vetranović’s Istorija od Dijane
Dubravka Dulibić-Paljar
orcid.org/0000-0002-3967-7604
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta Jurja Dobrile u Puli, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
Based on contemporary literary and historiographic problematization of female virginity as a religious phenomenon and true commonplace of premodern Western culture, the article addresses the religious discourse on this topic in Mavro Vetranović’s pastoral play Istorija od Dijane. Similar to other authors of Dubrovnik pastoral literature, Vetranović develops allegorical images and motifs of the Ragusan free and cultivated lifestyle. His focus on freedom, as fundamental value of the Ragusan society, is translated metaphorically from the religious concept of virginity as freedom to the concept of ideal city, Dubrava. In addition to this fundamental allegorical gesture, which, like most pastoral gestures, should be critically counterposed to reality―here still harmonious yet clearly hierarchical―we have allegorical thematisation of spiritual initiation. That process accentuates virginity in its liminality and inherent instability, wherein everything develops through dramatisation of the motif of Cupid’s trap, so that the capture and liberation of the fairy represents an allegorical image of the transition from virginity to womanhood and vice versa.
Keywords
Mavro Vetranović; Istorija od Dijane; Dubrovnik; pastoral drama; Renaissance; virginity; female character; Croatian literary history
Hrčak ID:
199719
URI
Publication date:
2.5.2018.
Visits: 2.922 *