Towards an intellectual history of the Croatian Modernist movement at the turn of the 20th century: state of research and research problems (Summary)

U radu se razlažu teorijski i metodološki problemi istraživanja fenomena hrvatskog modernističkog pokreta na prijelomu 19. i 20. stoljeća. Na temelju analize navedenih problema također se osvrće na stanje istraženosti teme te postojeće istraživačke pristupe, prvenstveno u okviru historiografije. Cilj je rada analizom istraživačkih problema uputiti na teorijske i metodološke mogućnosti za istraživanje fenomena ove vrste koje nudi konceptualni okvir intelektualne historije.The Croatian Modernist movement (also called the Youth Movement) has not been the subject of extensive historiographic research. There is no monograph dealing exclusively with this topic. It was mostly included in broader research and featured in overviews of political history, which narrowed the focus to political and social aspects of the movement. On the other hand, literary and art history for the most part focused on literary, artistic, or more broadly cultural aspects of the movement. This was reflected in the terminological discrepancies, as well as a clear disciplinary segregation which obscured the historical significance of the movement as a phenomenon sui generis. In this paper, several theoretical and methodological problems which arise in dealing with the problem of the fin de siècle Croatian Modernist movement are explored. They are viewed from the standpoint of intellectual history as a rendezvous discipline in an attempt to integrate diverse disciplinary perspectives and approaches. The first problem is concerned with the definition of the research object itself, i.e. the question whether the Youth Movement was a formal and homogeneous movement, or an informal and heterogeneous intellectual and cultural current. Closely related to this is the second problem of the chronological and spatial dimensions of the movement, which brings forth the transnational aspect of the phenomenon and also the necessary comparisons with other fin de siècle European Modernist movements. Thirdly, the question of the movement’s internal division is explored, touching mostly on the aforementioned disciplinary segregation of research on the topic. Following that is a brief discussion of the various sources that are at our disposal for the investigation of the Croatian Modernist movement. Finally, two more closely theoretical and methodological questions are elaborated: the concept of ‘influence’ and its critique within contemporary debates in intellectual history, and the methodological problem of teleology when dealing with fin de siècle phenomena in their relationship to 20th century developments