Prigodnice fra Grge Martića biskupu Strossmayeru. Pogled u usmenoknjiževnu retoriku
Occasional Poems by Friar Grgo Martić To Bishop Strossmayer: An Insight Into The Rhetoric Of Oral Poetry

Summary/Abstract: The number of prigodnice (occasional poems) exceeds all expectations: if we were to systemize them according to their chronological or thematical parameters, we would reconstruct poetical history of Strossmayer’s life. Even if we avoid such an ambitious endeavour and reduce the subject of our research to the limited and available corpus of the poems by one author, we shall still have enough material for analytical research. Friar Grgo Martić (1822–1905), was Strossmayer’s »man of occasional poems « par excellence, because no other writer or poet, among numerous authors, produced as high a number of these poems as this learned Franciscan whom V. Jagić called »Croatian Homer «. When considering poetic texts for special occasions, the fundamental guidelines for the research are determined independently of the author and his intention. The literary value of these texts cannot be found in the autonomous authorial inventiveness on the content level but on the level 77 R. P š i h i s t a l , Prigodnice fra Grge Martića biskupu Strossmayeru (41–77) »Umjetnost riječi« LI (2007) • 1–2 • Zagreb • siječanj – lipanj of expression and style of the poetic discourse. Likewise, the determining parameters are not to be found in aesthetic or poetic tractate but in the rhetorical codes prescribed within three rhetorical fields: the theory of argumentation, the theory of composition and the theory of elocution. Being a comprehensive communicative grammar, the rhetoric prescribes both selective and combinatorial rules in the creation of poems for special occasions at three levels: the level of thematic and motivational choice, the level of structure disposition and the level of surface style. Therefore, the analysis of Martić’ s poems deals with these three levels. However, the category of oral tradition, which is the dominant component of Martić’ s poetic discourse, has directed our research towards the pragmatic context of these poems which is equally responsible for their creation and for their – apparently – shortlived »literary « success.

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