The Zadar baroque poet Agostino Giordani

Abstract

The article discusses a collection of poetry by Agostino Giordani from Zadar, written in Italian and Latin and previously unknown to the Croatian public. It gives new evidence for the presence of Croats within the culture of the seicento. Giordani's achievement deserves our attention because his "twofold affiliation" enriched both Croatian culture and literature and because the accomplishments of Croatian Renaissance writers established their European bearings. Agostino Giordani is a representative of tradition and of Classical literature and, writing in Latin, can be numbered among the Croatian writers who used Latin. He is primarily a representative of Baroque literature who from the seicento cultural framework accepted its liberal aspect of the literature of the "commonplace" and through his conceits managed to make the presence of the Croatian identity, particularly the city of Zadar, felt in the everyday affairs of such a large European university-cultural center like Baroque Padova of the time. The author analyses Giordani's Baroque modernity and the verses pertaining to Zadar and makes the suggestion that further investigations of these texts could permanently establish Giordani's position within these coordinates.