Croatian Poetry in Latin in the 17th Century: Stylistic Tendencies and Genre Repertory

Stepanić, Gorana. (2005). Croatian Poetry in Latin in the 17th Century: Stylistic Tendencies and Genre Repertory. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, UNSPECIFIED. [mentor Novaković, Darko].

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Abstract

Croatian Latinism in the 17th century, especially its poetry, has been by far less researched than the Croatian Latinism of other centuries. A rough review of the material has discovered a corpus of texts of almost 100,000 verses. Approximately over two thirds of the corpus is available in printed form, however, 26,000 known verses in manuscript have not yet, for the most part, been engaged in scientific research. This dissertation aims at making a catalogue, as accurately as possible, of the heritage both in print and in manuscript, including mislaid or apocryphal titles. Latin poetry has been divided into three groups taking into account the authors’ political affiliation: Ragusa, Dalmatia and the Habsburg Monarchy. The older generation of Ragusan Latinists from the 17th century is represented by F. Gundulić, N. Brautić, Dž. Bunić Vučić, J. Palmotić and S. Gradić. The middle generation includes Lukarević, B. Rogačić and M. Mondegaj, P. Palikuća, V. Pucić Soltanović, I. Gučetić the Younger and M. Rusić, whereas I. Đurđević belongs to the younger generation. Latinists from Venetian Dalmatia are A. Jordanić, M. Jelić Dražojević, A. Matijašević Caramaneo, M. Geričić and N. Kapor, V. Zmajević, and I. Tomko Mrnavić. Latinists from the Habsburg Monarchy constitute the smallest group: I. Despotović the Elder and the Younger, F. K. Frankopan, K. Vičić and P. Ritter Vitezović. The following part of the dissertation is dedicated to the description of the genre inventory of the defined corpus. In traditional genres poets mainly respect ancient poetic postulates. Epic is characterised by a small number of comprehensive epic poems, whereas shorter hexameter poems deal with occasional praises of rulers and dignitaries, poems about specific saints, ecphrasis or commemorating pivotal historic events (the earthquake in Dubrovnik). Elegy covers a wide range of themes so that it appears in the form of religious poems, epistles, laments or classical love elegies. Epigrammatic poetry covers the widest range of themes, but religious verses are greatly prevalent. Sometimes, there is an inclination visible to the traditional Martial’s pointe. Lyric is predominantly religious, but occasional poems are also common. Several eclogues, Theocritan-Vergilian idylls, epithalamies, and Christianized fasti are preserved in manuscript. Metamorphosis is popular as a genre, i.e. as a fixed literary form. Besides the genres of ancient origin, forms characteristic of Neo-Latinism are also analysed (anagrams, emblematic poetry, sonnets). The fourth chapter focuses on the ludic dimension of the Latin poetry of the 17th century and on the procedures of connecting images, texts and numbers (anagram, rebus, chronogram, i.e. chronoverse, carmen cabalisticum, acro-, mezo- and telestichon, alphabet poems with the figure of echo, various forms of rhyme in the quantitative verse). The research of stylistic aspects of the corpus shows that certain rhetorical figures occur with conspicuous frequency in the texts of some authors (strong metaphor, asyndeton, Summationsschema, traductio, antimetabole, antithesis, paradox). However, it is a fact that these are only sporadic phenomena and there are no longer texts whose style would take precedence over all other constituent parts of the work. This is an important distinctive feature of Latin poetry compared with the poetry in the Croatian language of the same period. Having posed the question of stylistic formations in Neo-Latin and on the basis of the definition of the Baroque exclusively as a style, we can come to the conclusion that Croatian poetry in Latin in the 17th century cannot be considered baroque, although it does occasionally support the Baroque stylistic complex.

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