Milan Rešetar

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Milan Rešetar (Serbian Cyrillic: Милан Решетар, February 1, 1860, Dubrovnik – January 14, 1942, Florence) was a Croatian slavist, linguist, ragusologist and historian.

After the gimnasium in Dubrovnik, he attained studies of classic Philology and Slavistics in Vienna. He worked as a high-school professor in Koper, Zadar and Split, and later a professor of Slavistics on universities of Vienna and Zagreb). He also edited the Croatian edition of "List drevnih zakona" magazine. Rešetar was a student of Vatroslav Jagić.[1] After retirement, he moved to Florence where he died 1942.

The main areas of his works included dialectology and accentology of South Slavic languages , as well as philologically impeccable editions of older, 15th to 18th century Croatian writers for the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (then called "Yugoslav", "jugoslavenska") edition "Stari pisci hrvatski"/old Croatian writers".

He was one of founders of South-Slavic dialectics, investigating features of Shtokavian (Der Štokawische Dialect, Vienna, 1907) and Chakavian dialects, and also wrote a monography about Molise Croatian dialect. He was also engaged in the field of numismatics (Dubrovačka numizmatika, 1924-1925), inheriting the interest and coin collection from his father Pavle.

His most important works include:

  • "Čakavština i njene nekadašnje i sadašnje granice" (Chakavian Dialect, its Past and Present Boundaries)
  • "Štokavski dijalekat" (Shtokavian Dialect)
  • "Najstariji dubrovački govor" (Oldest Dialects of Dubrovnik)
  • "Najstarija dubrovačka proza" (Oldest Literature of Dubrovnik).

His works in this area are, with a few exceptions, superseded by later areal linguistics and historical dialectology research. On the other hand, Rešetar's editions of the Renaissance and Baroque poets and playwrights are still the standard printed issues-only modern computerized textology analyses, done in the Institute for Croatian language and linguistics, have begun to question some aspects of his transliteration choices on the graphemics level. The big part of his work in this area remains highly regarded and confirmed by contemporary textology.
On the other hand, some of his work remained unprecise (in the text where he claims that Čakavian dialect of Croatian was never spoken in Dubrovnik). Second, his scientifical attitudes towards Štokavian-Ijekavian dialect of Croatian language in Dubrovnik were driven by his political motives - Rešetar belonged to the freshly organized political movement in Dubrovnik, financed from Serbia, called "Serb Catholics" [1]. Later he changed his declaring by nationality into "Yugoslav".

Best description of his political attitudes and their influence on his scientific work is in Milan Rešetar's statement: "That is why I still claim, like I had claimed fifty years ago, that in Dubrovnik, neither in it as a whole nor in any of its parts, has been Dalmatian Chakavian-Ikavian speech been used, but always just the Herzegovina Shtokavian-Iyekavian. I will not trace away from that scientific conclusion, nor will I get into the, sadly, engulfing arguments about the Serbdom or Croatdom of Dubrovnik, because on my account Serbs and Croats are one people with two names, for which is to me Dubrovnik both Serbian and Croatian. But the one who splits Serbdom from Croatdom must admit that Dubrovnik was always Serbian."[citation needed]


[edit] References

  1. ^ Croatian Professors in Vienna's Slavistics Faculty

[edit] External links