How Vitezovic read Mrnavic

Abstract

Plorantis Croatiae saecula duo (1703) by Pavao Ritter Vitezovic (1652-1713) and Vita Petri Berislavi (1620) by Ivan Tomko Mrnavic (1580-1637), two significant works in the Croatian literary corpus written in Latin that deal with important historical characters and events from Croatian history with the explicit intent of preserving them from oblivion, have unjustifiably been omitted from the national literary canon. Following recent scholarly interest in these works in the last fifteen years or so, this paper reinvestigates and confirms intertextual references, with special emphasis on Vitezovic's relation to Mrnavic. The article focuses on determining traces and re-stylizations of parts of the Vita in around sixty lines of verse from the first canto of the Two Centuries of Croatia in Mourning, which are shown to be a complete episode, paradigmatic in its ideological concept for the whole poetic work. Keywords: re-stylization; Vitezovic; Mrnavic; contraction, versification, expansion