Animal Imagery of Human Nature: The Flower of Virtue in the Croatian Glagolitic Code of Vinodol.

The paper is focused on the importance of translation of the 14th-century Italian morality work Fiore di virtù in the context of European medieval moralistic-didactic literature with a special view on the “golden era” of the Croatian Glagolitic period. In the first part the paper sums up the European translations of Fiore di virtù while emphasizing the key and recent papers on the theme, after which analysis concentrates on the Croatian translation of the Flo?er of Virtue and analyses that cover this theme in the first half of the 20th century. With a special attention the oldest Croatian Glagolitic translation is examined, which has been kept in the Vinodol Miscellany, the Glagolitic manuscript from the first half of the 15th century that is kept in the Archive of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (sign. IIIa 15). The research focuses on the parts of the paragraphs dealing with animals and their importance in explaining human laws or virtues, by which the constant re-examination of the relationship between human and animal through history is emphasized. The aim of the paper is to point out the constant interest of man in nature and his/her place in it, as well as finding the explanation for some of the unexplainable instances of human behaviour through the life of animals. - [Abstract]

Language: Croation

Locators: ISBN: 978-953-7997-33-5