engleski

New Wine into Old Wineskins: Macaronic Poetry and National Identity

The presentation examines the manifestations of new national identities in Central Europe as mirrored in the vicissitudes of macaronic poetry. It is a literary and linguistic phenomenon that originated in Renaissance Italy, but was soon spread throughout the Europe and lasted until 20th century. Its basic features include language mixing (with Latin as a basic language) and a humorous/satirical/burlesque content. As always, in such poetry the choice of linguistic varieties and their distribution is associated with their social status, i. e. with the relations between speech communities that use them. It places Latin and vernacular in the closest possible connection, thus sharply contrasting them and bringing to light all social tensions between them. So far, researchers have been focused on the origins of the genre in the specific sociolinguistic context of 15th century Northern Italy, having disregarded later instances, especialy those in Central and Eastern Europe, as mere uninventive epigonism. However, the fact that an old linguistic and literary form was taken up to be employed in new circumstances, in the period when the relative power of varieties involved was entirely different and when modern national identities were arising, is itself intriguing and demands a discussion.

macaronic poetry; neo-Latin; sociolinguistics

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