Dalmatian Writers in the 18th Century Slavonic Literature. Josip Stojanović and Marko Marulić

In his study Slavonic Literature in the 18th Century Branko Drechsler (Vodnik) points to a possible correlation between two late 18th century poems by Josip Stojanović, a Franciscan from Brod, and two 16th century miracle plays, allegedly by Marulić. In Drechler’s study the poem Tužba duše i tila osuđena (The Grievances of the Soul and the Flesh Condemned) is confronted with the miracle play Govorenje sv. Bernarda od duse osujene (St Bernard’s Sermon on the Condemned Soul), and the poem Uspomena općenskoga suda (The Memory of the Last Judgement) with allegedly Marulić’s Prikazanje od nevoljnoga dne (A Miracle Play treating of the Last Judgement). The scope of the present article is to provide Vodnik’s analysis with critical comments and a glossary of terms commonly used in the framework of modern intertextual analyses. Having identified in the first poem a number of the thematic, fabular, compositional and stylistic quotations from Marulić, the author confirms that it is an unquestionable stylization of Marulić’s prototext. However, where the second one is concerned, he finds out that on the whole, if we neglect some stylistic reminiscences that may recall Marulić, its dependance on the respective miracle play is not that clear. It would be, of course, exaggerated to conclude that its complete thematic, fabular and compositional designs necessarily imply Marulić’s text, since, as a matter of principle, the topoi of the “last judgement”, that abound in Stojanović’s text, be-long to the general matrix of medieval eschatology. However, as the concluding argument in favor of the thesis that Stojanović returned to Marulić for inspiration, the author quotes Vodnik’s remark that perfectly explains the function of the recognized intertextual links: Stojanović’s religious poems are closely connected with the reaction to the contemporary Voltairanism. Faced with the penetration of the ideas of the Enlightenment from the south and west of Europe, he turned to the Croatian - more precisely Dalmatian - literary heritage and it should not come to us as a surprise that he chose the moralist and the Catholic Marulić as his favorite model. With this he joined other Slavonic writers who drew on the spiritual legacy of the Croatian south, like Antun Kanižlić, Emerik Pavić, Josip Pavišević or Matija Petar Katančić, confirming, at the same time, his own vivid consciousness of the continuity of the national literary tradition