Povijesni prostori u pseudopovijesnim tragikomedijama Junija Palmotića
Historical Spaces in Palmotić's Pseudohistorical Tragicomedies

Summary/Abstract: Within the rich volume of works written by the Dubrovnik author Junije Palmotić (1607–1657), four tragicomedies (Pavlimir, Danica, Captislava, and Bisernica) are usually designated as pseudohistorical by literary historiography due to their numerous references to historical spaces, times, and events. Historical spaces are major constituents of the dramatic world of these works: the action is localized in concrete historical territories (Epidaurus/Dubrovnik; the Bosnian Kingdom; the Kingdom of Hungary); the protagonists, whose names evoke (pseudo)historical persons from Slovin courts, are signifiers of particular political spaces; and a reading of individual enunciations, characters’ actions, dramatic confrontations and their resolutions indicates the valuation of historical spaces and their respective hierarchy. Images of Dubrovnik, Hungarian, and Bosnian spaces are thereby formed as positive and the Turkish is seen as negative, whereas the image of Serbian space is valued ambivalently. Revealing themselves as spaces enriched with cultural significance, historical spaces in these tragicomedies do not act merely as a neutral background, but as a major element in the construction of identity. Within Palmotić’s fictional worlds and through a network of autoimages and heteroimages, Dubrovnik patriotism, Christianity, and Slovin fellowship are constructed as cardinal ideas of community– a clear indication of the cultural and political discourse in seventeenth-century Dubrovnik.

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