Usmena književnost u povijestima hrvatske književnosti

Abstract

Oral literature exists as long as humankind. Through history, that kind of literature was known as folk, anonymous, folklore, traditional, peasant (during the reign of Croatian Peasant Party). Oral literature is the tradition of written literature. In the past, oral literature was often given more attention than the written, and sometimes it was neglected. A great interest in folk literature emerged in the Renaissance period. Michel de Montaigne was enthusiastic about folk poetry and since his time term folk literature has been in use. The oral literature has reached its peak of popularity during the Romanticism. Approach to the oral literature in Croatian histories of literature is fourfold. Some literary historians barely mention it in their histories. Others speak of it peripherally when dealing with, for example, Petar Hektorović, Ivan Gundulić, Andrija Kačić Miošić, and many others. Some literary historians write about both oral (folk) and written literature in their histories of literature. The final approach is by those authors who have written histories of oral (folk) literature. Some literary historians have written histories of oral literature. Maja Bošković-Stulli in collaboration with Divna Zečević dedicated the first book of 1978 edition Povijest hrvatske književnosti: u sedam knjiga to the oral literature. In that history, the authors wrote about folk literature alongside the oral. In 1990 Tvrtko Čubelić published a monograph Povijest i historija usmene narodne književnosti. Marko Dragić published Poetika i povijest hrvatske usmene književnosti in 2008 and Stipe Botica published Povijest hrvatske usmene književnosti in 2013.