The Study on Mavro Vetranović by Juraj Carić of Hvar

Abstract

Best known as a marine writer, Juraj Carić (Svirče, Hvar, 1854 – Jelsa, 1927) published a study in Italian on Mavro Vetranović during his sojourn in Dubrovnik in 1895, where he worked as a lecturer at the Nautical School. The writer presented him as a theologian, philosopher, physicist, botanist, astronomer and the first original author of Croatian Renaissance literature. Although not a professional philologist, Carić produced one of the first complete reviews of Vetranović’s poetic opus with the aim of the acknowledgement of glory for ‘who is worthy of glory’. He wrote this study relying on the relevant bibliography (sources in Croatian, Italian and German) and encouraged by the ‘bitter truth’ of the insufficient knowledge of his literary past and the prejudices arising from ‘superficial and not always objective studies’. After the analysis of Carić’s study, the author of this paper concludes that it is not merely one of the contributions to the ‘discovery’ of Mavro Vetranović and Croatian Renaissance literature in the 19th century. Moreover, it is an exemplar of an author’s pen, worth far more with time than just a modest interested reader as this learned native of Hvar presents himself.