SVIBOR - Project code: 6-03-292

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SVIBOR - Collecting Data on Projects in Croatia

Project code: 6-03-292

THE CROATIAN AND FRENCH CULTURAL CONNECTIONS IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD

Main researcher: VIDAN, GABRIJELA (52112)

Assistants

Type of research: basic
Duration from: 07/01/92. to 07/01/96.

Papers on project (total): 17

Institution name: Filozofski fakultet - Humanističke znanosti, Zagreb (130)
Department/Institute: Institute for Literary Studies
Address: Đ. Salaja 3
City: 10000 - Zagreb, Croatia

Communication: Phone: 385 (0)41 620-140 ili 521-375; Fax: 385 (0)41 513-834

Summary: The project, dealing with relations between two relatively distant countries with differentiated traditions - Croatia and France in the Enlightenment period - is based on a comparative and intercultural approach to the history of literature. So far this period in Croatian history, extending up to the beginning of the Illyrian national revival (1830) has been rather neglected in its European, especially French context, although it already contained significant novelties introduced in the texts of culture, which later became instrumental in the Romantic nationalist movement. The encounter of two mental universes and cultures with no direct connections, except for a very brief period of Napoleon's Illyrian Provinces (1809-1813), is all the more interesting since it presented a counterbalance to Italian and German impacts, and clearly echoes signs of an intellectual coming of age and the insertion of Croatian life in the European mainstreams of modern times. This project, dealing with the Enlightenment, a period often expressed by the phrase "French Europe", fits into the important European project set up by the Croatian Academy of sciences and Arts which is entitled: "Croatia and Europe, culture, sciences and arts", and is based on a comparative history of culture.

Keywords: Enlightenment, intercrossing of culture, intercultural approach, new cultural history, interliterary process, reception and appropriation, genre instability, reading and book diffusion, libraries, texts and translations in manuscript form, public sphere, national awakening, double allegiance

Research goals: The result of this research would be a book entitled "In the looking-glass of the Other". It would be the first comprehensive scholarly contribution dealing with the analysis of Croatia's culture and letters in the period before the Illyrian Revival, set in a European context, more specifically against French impacts in the field of literature and political thinking. Phenomena like imitation and rejection, appropriation or search for new models in France, were a logical reaction to and the outcome of the progressively stronger and more aggresive Italian and German cultures and their dominance in Croatia. On the other hand, both the fact that in this same period there are more French travellers and "philosophes" who show a keener interest for Croatian history, past and present, as well as the fact that we inevitably draw upon a French-based knowledge and methodology, will as a consequence, convey an overall picture of Croatia from a specific point of view.

Other information about the project.


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Last update: 03/12/96
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