On the sources and authorities in Planine by Petar Zoranić

Abstract

Summary The rise of ecological awareness in recent decades corresponds to the emergence of the increasingly reputable and significant field of ecocritical studies, which has resulted in the publication of many valuable literary discussions devoted to the study of the relationship between humanity and the environment. In this context, a visible shift has been made towards the study of earlier periods in literature, so scholars prone to an ecocritical approach in recent years have been discovering great potential in the corpus of older literary texts. Renaissance literature, both European and Croatian, the latter following the literary trends of the time, combined with certain national characteristics conditioned by the socio-political situation of the time, proves to be very fruitful for this type of analysis. This article therefore addresses the Croatian Renaissance text of Petar Zoranić’s Planine to analyze: 1. problems of source and originality, 2. the historical and allegorical potentials of the text, 3. nature as a place of consolation as well as a source of cognition, and for the acquisition of various types of knowledge that were sought after by the people of the Renaissance, 4. the relationships between different types and levels of authority (mythological, folk, ancient, religious, contemporary, esoteric). Also, the author's position is examined, since it changed significantly at that time, especially regarding the writer's anxiety in relation to the authorities, the task and position of literature itself, and the right/yearning for knowledge. All this makes Planine an interesting early modern discourse, very amenable to an ecocritical analytical approach.