Polonophilic ideologemes and mythologemes in the croatian baroque poetry

Fališevac, Dunja. (2003). Polonophilic ideologemes and mythologemes in the croatian baroque poetry. Umjetnost riječi : časopis za znanost o književnosti, 47(1-2). pp. 85-105. ISSN 0503-1853

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Abstract

The topic of this article is polonophilia – the love for the Polish people and the glorification of anything Polish in the Croatian baroque literature. After a short historic overview in which the attitude of the Croatian humanists towards the Polish state and its people is described, this essay focuses on the works of the three Dubrovnik baroque poets – Ivan Gundulić, Petar Kanavelić, and Petar Bogašinović – all of whom addressed Polish themes. Poland is best represented in the canonic and classic work of the Croatian baroque, Gunduli}’s epic poem Osman (written in the second and the third decades of the seventeenth century). It describes the battle at Hoćim in 1621 and the death of the sultan Osman II in Constantinople a year later. Bogašinović’s epic work as well as the two poems by Kanavelić are written in celebration of Jan Sobieski as the liberator of Vienna – and all of Europe – from the barbarians. The analysis of the treatment of Polish themes attempts to account for polonophilia in the Croatian literary baroque. The article maintains that there are two reasons for the glorification of the Poles at that period in Dubrovnik’s history. First, it was motivated by the fear of the Turks (the foray of the Turks on the Balkans and later in Central Europe, the dependency of the Dubrovnik Republic on the Turks). Second, polonophilia was prompted by the utopian desire for one’s own statehood and nationhood, and it is the result of the conscious or subconscious identification of the Dubrovnik Republic with the Polish state and its people. This identification and projection of a desired vision of Poland emerged in several leitmotifs: the vision of Poland as a free, aristocratic, powerful state and the liberator of Europe from the Turks, the celebration of Polish tholicism, and the mistrust in Europe as the liberator from the barbarians. In the analysis of the content and range of the notion of polonophilia, apart from literary, historical, religious, social, and class motifs, cultural motifs were also taken into consideration. Our intention was to look into the ways in which the modes of signification in the baroque period, namely its affinity for utopian visions of society, contributed to the fact that the love for everything Polish developed to such an extent during this period.

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