Les Morlaques i La Guzla: dva čitanja Fortisova Puta po Dalmaciji
Les Morlaques and la Guzla: two readings of Fortis' Journey in Dalmatia

Summary/Abstract: The literary fashion of Morlaquism at the tum of the 18th to 19th century has brought parts of Croatia into the focus of interest of sentimental Europe of that time. At the time 151 when the intellectual circles of Western Europe were engrossed by Macpherson's mystification of Ossian's ballads and when ratio was gradually being replaced by the idea of genius, new scholarly works on unknown and exotic parts of the world were whole-heartedly we1comed by the reading public. Albert Fortis' Joruney in Dalmatia (1774), the scholariy and literary document on the southern part of Croatia, met with a tremendous response in literary circles. The novel, The Morlacs, by Justine Wynne, the Countess of Rosenberg-Orsini, and Prosper Merimee's mystification La Guzta resulted from the reading of Fortis' notes, thus transforming the scholarly and cultural perceptions of a curious traveller into a literary depiction of life in an exotic community, untouched by civilisation, and therefore attracting the admiration of a surfeited Europe as diagnosed by Rousseau.

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