CLOSE AND DISTANT OTHERS: ANIMALISTIC COMPONENTS OF THE FLOWER OF VIRTUE

Abstract

In this paper we will focus on the preserved animalistic paragraphs of the moralisticdidactic treatise known as the Flower of Virtue or Flower of Wisdom from the Croatian Glagolitic literary corpus. It is a translation of a popular Italian folk literary work, Fiore di Virtù, which was translated into several vernacular languages and after that printed during the following several centuries. The work is divided into chapters, and each consists of four key units. Our attention will be directed onto those paragraphs in which a certain animal is introduced with the purpose of visualizing abstract notions such as cruelty, mercy, anger, generosity and similar that explain human nature. In the paper we will classify the animals according to species, and then present their list in the form of a table which gives information on their symbolical meaning in the text as well as the transliterated paragraph from several Glagolitic manuscripts and from one Cyrillic manuscript that contain translations of the analysed paragraphs. In this way we will, for the first time, systematically present all the animals in the Croatian version of the Flower of Virtue and give a short overview of some of them.