The Dialectal Basis of the Language of Croatian Drama to the Illyrian Movement

Abstract

The speech idioms of the diasystem of Croato-Serbian dialects during the prolonged period before the Croatian national revival were reflected, up to a point, in the language of Croatian drama written before the Illyrian movements. However, the appearance of dialectal features in dramatic texts was not uniform. The situation differed during various life-spans of organic idioms and within the separate developmental periods of Croatian drama. Some organic idioms played greater or more significant roles than otheres in the writing of dramatic texts while many were not represented at all. The autochthonous speech elements did not appear equally in different literary genres, so that their presence was much more pronounced in comedy, for example, than in tragedy, the pastoral or in lyric poetry. Medieval dramatic texts evince that the čakavian dialect, admixed with Old Church Slavic of Croatian elements, was the basic of the literary language during the first period of this part of the Croatian literature. Church theatre had its beginnings in Zadar and its environments, from whence it expanded up North to Kvarner and Istria and down South to Budva, making a gradual headway into the interior. Analysis shows that the čakavian dialects, particularly the two great dialects of Middle-čakavian and Southem-čakavian, lie at the basic of Medieval dramatic works. Writers from Dubrovnik, especially Marin Držić, excel among Renaissance authors. Having before him the writers of the past, primarily the tradition of Džore Držić, Vetranović and Nalješković, Marin Držić in his works conjoins both authentic dialectisms and an expertly use of alloglotte elements, advancing the linguistic and stylistic procedures found in his predecessors. Besides Dubrovnik the most valuable texts are those of the authors from Hvar which were strongly influenced by Dubrovnik. During the Baroque period, the Dubrovnik writers using the štokavian variant, among whom Ivan Gundulić was most important, continued to have a dominant and strong influence, so that these influences are evident tin Bartol Kašić from Pag and in Petar Kanavelić from Korčula. Impulses from Dubrovnik of older date are found in Divković from the area of the East-Bosnian dialect whereas Frankopan excels in translating Molière. Works using the čakavian and kajkavian dialects appear alongsides other baroque texts within the antire area of Croatian territories. The anlightement and the period of sentimentalism are likewise essentially marked by writers from Dubrovnik. Of special interest amongst their texts are recastings of Molière and »Kate Kapuralica« by Vlaho Stulić. Except certain works written in Bosnia and Slavonia, one notices the virtual disappearance of čakavian literature during the mid-eighteenth century. Tituš Brezovački who more than other kajkavian authors offers language characterization of characters, excels among kajkavian dramatists with his language expertise and the nontranslatable quality of his opus. On the whole one can conclude that Croatian dramatists wrote primarily for the stage but their texts can be approached with dialectological interests in mind. It is clear that, up to a point, many old plays mirror, in principle, the dialectal state of areas where they were written, whereas by the and of the XVIIIth and the beginning of the XIXth century we have plays written in either the kajkavian or the new-štokavian standard language incorporating, it should be understtod, many colloquialisms which are characteristic for the language of dramatic works.