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Literature and Ignorance: Functions of Lycidas in the "Dialogi sull’aurora boreale" by Ruđer Bošković
Snježana Husić
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb
Sažetak
Dialogues on the aurora borealis (Dialogi sull’aurora boreale, 1748) by Ruđer Bošković involve four named characters, of which two mentioned and two dramatis personae. In his introduction to the Dialogues, Bošković follows though another type of categorization and stresses that only one of the four is »a fictional name« (un nome finto) – Lycidas, who converses with Bošković’s literary alter ego Numenius. Unlike the other three characters, who are scholars and also real persons beyond the text, the fictional Lycidas is represented as a shepherd unfamiliar with scientific explanations of meteorological phenomena. Therefore, he might seem at first misplaced in such a learned fellowship, but Lycidas proves to be crucial to the shaping of Bošković’s discourse on northern lights, and that is true in two senses at least: he constitutes a necessary link to pastoral literature, and he motivates the conversation by his very ignorance. Intertextual positioning of Dialogues, both in relation to the whole of the genre system and to Carlo Noceti’s poem in occasion of which Bošković wrote his text, offers as well clues to the consideration of specialization of different types of discourse – literary and scientific, verse and prose – that took place in eighteenth century and later on.
Ključne riječi
Ruđer Bošković; pastoral literature; character function; discourse motivation; intertextuality
Hrčak ID:
118846
URI
Datum izdavanja:
21.3.2014.
Posjeta: 1.049 *