Typological-Motif Connections Between the Bosniak Diwan Poetry and the Croatian Baroque Poetry

Abstract

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, in parallel, independently and in different languages, existed two literary traditions of different but also in many segments related poetics: Baroque in Croatia, originated within the Catholic Counter-Reformation and under strong influence of European Baroque, and Bosniak literature in Oriental languages, in which the central place is occupied by Diwan poetry of sufi-mystic inspiration. Similarities that are in the focus of this thesis are conditioned by social contexts, the influx of religions and religious orders, which has determined the utilitarian nature of these poetics, as well as similar collective and personal experiences of poets dedicated to religious and spiritual topics. In this sense, at the typological-motif level, they have a lot in common, with significant interweaving in expression, sometimes also in the form (length) of poems, and above all in worldview parallels, such as tendency towards the supremacy of hedonism and the affirmation of memento mori life principles. The most common motifs, such as love, infatuation, transience and contempt of this world, sin, as well as motifs of butterflies and candles have been given the most attention in comparative analysis. Sometimes, they are equally understood, butsometimes they have opposite meanings in the works of Baroque and Diwan poets. This literary-historical thesis, in that sense, is an attempt of intercultural and poetically oriented comparative analysis of analogous phenomena fromsimilar and, in many respects,interrelated national literatures.