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Gundulić’s Osman as an Anthropological Problem

Antun Pavešković

Sažetak

Until recently, the discussion on Gundulić’s Osman has been confined to literary history. In his attempt to highlight the epic from the anthropological point of view, the author aims to examine it as a modern expression of essential truths on man and manhood. He finds them in the relationship between the central character of the epic, Sultan Osman, and Gundulić as an explicit narrator. Far from neutral or objective, the relationship is imbued with strong hostility. A series of details, as, for example, a constant reminder of the disproportion between the ruler’s abilities to govern and the burden of power, are being examined as symptoms of Gundulić’s efforts to bring the young sultan into the position of a victim. Osman as a sacrificial victim is the one in which we recognize the source of evil, but at the same time he has a beneficent role because through him the community will restore peace and harmony. Thus, at the same time, the sultan is an extremely negative character but also a positive one, implicitly at least. The author questions the reasons which guided Gundulić to construct his entire epic on animosity towards the main hero, locating them in the fact that Gundulić wrote in a period of turmoil and belonged to a class experiencing intense political ferment. It should be noted that the need for a sacrificial victim does not arise as long as the community is threatened from the outside. The external menace tends to homogenize the community and thus reinforce the warrant of its existence. The integrity of the community may be seriously threatened only from the inside, caused by faction or violence coming from within itself. On the social level, the latter was potentially present among the Ragusan patriciate, only to spread into an open and dangerous rift in the seventeenth century. With Osman as scapegoat, Gundulić uses his epic to perform a sacrificial ritual necessary for the symbolic externalization and resolution of the rift within the patriciate.

Ključne riječi

Hrčak ID:

11629

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/11629

Datum izdavanja:

23.5.2004.

Podaci na drugim jezicima: hrvatski

Posjeta: 2.918 *