Croatica et Slavica Iadertina is a scientific journal with an international editorial and scientific advisory board which is published by the Department of Croatian Studies and Department of Russian Studies of the University of Zadar, and it is financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Education. It was first published in 2005 as an annual journal. Since 2011 it has been published biannually in both print and electronic form. Electronic versions of both issues are published no later than December of the calendar year to which the issue refers. The journal exclusively publishes previously unpublished articles. It is primarily intended for dissemination of new findings in Croatian and Slavic studies, but it also publishes research findings in other humanities, if it is estimated that they encourage interdisciplinarity as well as theoretical and methodological innovations in Croatian and Slavic studies. Apart from research articles, classified as Original Scientific Paper, Preliminary Communication, Review Article, or Professional Paper, in the section »Material«, the journal also publishes critical editions of shorter unknown or unpublished sources which impose new research questions to literary historiography, as well as critical reviews of important monographs, new issues of serial publications, scientific conferences, and online research tools, but also a smaller number of occasional articles. Except on Hrčak (https://hrcak.srce.hr/casopis/164), the electronic version of the journal is also published on the Online Publishing Platform by the University of Zadar: https://morepress.unizd.hr/journals/csi. Articles are exclusively received in electronic form at csi.unizd@gmail.com. Authors are not charged for publication of the paper. Neither authors nor reviewers are paid for their work. Duties and responsibilities of authors, the Editorial Board, and reviewers are based on the COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org and https://publicationethics.org/files/u2/Best_Practice.pdf). Received contributions are treated as confidential. Upon submission, contributions are anonymised in order to ensure fully impartial editorial evaluation based on the content. After inspecting the previously anonymised manuscript, the Editorial Board makes a decision about initiation of the review process and selection of reviewers. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject, in a written justification, without starting the review process, research manuscripts which are deficient in research or whose content is not connected with the scope of the journal. The Editorial Board makes a decision about publication of research articles as well as their classification after two positive external double-blind reviews. Manuscripts which receive one positive and one negative review in the first round of reviews must be evaluated by a third reviewer. Authors are provided with anonymised reviews. The journal is listed in Linguistic Bibliography, Bibliography of Slavic Linguistics, Humanities International Index, Humanities Source Ultimate, as well as in European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS). The journal was classified as A1 journal in the field of humanities by the National Council for Science, Higher Education, and Technological Development (NN 72/2019). Review: double review, double-blind review, national and international, only categorised papers First year of publication: 2005 Frequency (annually): 2 Scientific disciplines and subdisciplines: literature, philology, humanistic sciences Author Guidelines (PDF) Guidelines for reviewers (docx) Publication Ethics Statement and Rights of Use (docx) Editorial board - contacts (docx) Rights: Croatica et Slavica Iadertina supports DOAJ principles of open access. Authors are not charged for publication of papers by the journal. Authors retain the copyright to their paper and the right to publish without restrictions. Free of charge and without delay, users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, or search the material, provide links to it, as well as modify or use it in other legal ways with obligatory citation of the original source in accordance with the CC BY 4.0 licence. Requests for subscription to the printed version of the journal should be sent to izdavastvo@unizd.hr
Современные короткометражные фильмы в практике преподавания русского языка как иностранного
Natallia Kabiak: Learn Russian through Contemporary Short Film. London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-032-73938-0
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Prvi beramski misal – izdanje iz zlatnoga doba hrvatskoga glagoljaštva
Prvi beramski misal: Hrvatskoglagoljični rukopis iz 15. stoljeća. Sv. 1: faksimil. Biblioteka Spomenici, knjiga 6. Glavni urednik Milan Mihaljević. Staroslavenski institut, Zagreb, 2024., 494 str. Prvi beramski misal: Hrvatskoglagoljični rukopis iz 15. stoljeća. Sv. 2: transliteracija. Biblioteka Spomenici, knjiga 6. Glavni urednik Milan Mihaljević. Staroslavenski institut, Zagreb, 2024., 554 str.
Important Ecolinguistic Insights into the Russian Linguistic Landscape and Discourse
Martin Henzelmann: Linguistik des ökologischen Diskurses. Untersuchungen zu Kommunikationsformen in Ökologie und Umweltschutz in der Russischen Föderation. Berlin, Brüssel: Peter Lang Verlag. 2024. ISBN: 978-363-190-118-2
Nova monografija o jeziku/jezicima u bosanskohercegovačkom zakonodavstvu
Emira Mešanović-Meša: Trojezičnost u bosanskohercegovačkom zakonodavstvu (Biblioteka Bosnistika, Monografije, knjiga 29, Slavistički komitet, Sarajevo, 2025, ISBN: 978-9958-648-40-3)
History, Fiction, and the Logic of Evil in Feđa Šehović’s Novel Oslobađanje đavola
Oslobađanje đavola (1987), together with Gorak okus duše (1983) and Uvod u tvrđavu (1989), constitutes a trilogy by Feđa Šehović (1930–2025), published under the pseudonym Raul Mitrovich, and is regarded as representative of the Croatian neo-historical novel. Starting from the insight into the characteristic poetic “duality” of this genre–its tendency towards contemporary postmodernist poetics (intertextuality, questioning the boundaries of fiction and reality, relationship between history and literature), while simultaneously relying on traditional elements of the historical novel (moral structure and didacticism)–Šehović’s novel is analysed from two perspectives. The first concerns intertextual strategies and ironic dialogue with historiographic discourse, which subvert the dominant narrative of the 1667 Dubrovnik earthquake and produce a counter-narrative that deconstructs the cultural myth of the Dubrovnik Republic. The second, moralistic aspect, associated with the eponymous motif of “releasing the devil”, involves an examination of evil as an anthropological constant and a driving force of history. History, as portrayed in the novel, appears as a cyclical repetition of violent patterns and is interpreted through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory, with particular attention to the manifestations of the scapegoat mechanism across different narrative levels. The double analytical approach highlights the ambivalent meanings of the relationship between literature and history: the novel uses intertextual procedures to relativise and erase the boundaries between history and fiction, but it also re-establishes them with its moral structure, making literature a privileged medium of moral knowledge.
Linguistic Landscape as an Indicator of the Sociolinguistic Situation in the Lower Vítkovice (Ostrava)
This paper explores the linguistic landscape of the Lower Vítkovice (DOV) area in Ostrava, focusing on the visibility of Polish as an indicator of the local sociolinguistic situation. The linguistic landscape is approached as a set of language practices in public space, whose visual and multimodal forms mirror broader cultural, ethnic, and communicative contexts. The analysis concentrates on Polish-language signs in DOV, a former industrial complex transformed into a cultural and educational hub and one of the most visited tourist sites in the Czech Republic. Findings show that Polish serves mainly as a supplementary code alongside Czech and English. Several types of multilingual signage are identified (duplicated, fragmentary, complementary), with Czech retaining dominance, while Polish often appears in reduced or stylistically inadequate forms. The occurrence of Polish inscriptions is linked primarily to tourism and labour migration rather than to the natural vitality of a minority community, as is the case in Czech Těšín region. Examples illustrate both inclusive practices (such as trilingual information boards) and potentially stigmatizing uses. Multimodal features play a crucial role in shaping comprehensibility and reception. The study thus provides not only a descriptive account but also a critical interpretation: Polish in DOV functions as a secondary yet stable language with symbolic and practical roles. Its presence in the public sphere indicates a degree of prestige and reflects deliberate efforts by a major cultural institution to accommodate cross-border visitors.
French Fairy Tales by Marko Vovchok and Mykola Tereshchenko’s Translation Strategy
The French-language heritage of Marko Vovchok remains understudied, particularly with regard to its translation analysis, which underlines the relevance and topicality of this article. This study analyses Mykola Tereshchenko’s Ukrainian translations of Vovchok’s French fairy tales, aiming to identify the characteristics of his translation strategy. For this purpose, the interpretive theory of translation (Seleskovitch & Lederer 1984), Berman’s concept of “deforming tendencies” (1984), and Venuti’s strategies (1995) were applied. The qualitative analysis is based on a comparative study of source and target texts. The results of this research demonstrate that a translator succeeded in achieving a balance in rendering original Vovchok’s idiostyle. The study has proved that the dominant translation strategy was domestication which, as a form of adaptation, inevitably involves the application of lexical and stylistic transformations. This is particularly noticeable when reproducing culturally marked elements, such as character names, realia, phraseological units, and folklore motifs. To implement the chosen strategy and to convey the emotive, expressive, and stylistic colouring of the fairy tales, also called children’s literature, the translator mostly employed the following techniques: modulation, concretisation, generalisation, cultural correspondence, explication, metaphorical preservation, remetaphorisation, functional adaptation. The investigation also revealed the occurrence of several of Berman’s “deforming tendencies”, such as rationalisation, clarification, expansion, and qualitative impoverishment. These findings indicate that Tereshchenko’s translation strategies contribute to intercultural mediation, bridging the French originals and the Ukrainian readership. Future research could involve a comparative analysis of other translations of Vovchok’s French prose.
The Bee, the Witch, and the Altar–On an Exemplum From the Petris Miscellany (1468)
The article interprets the hitherto unexplored exemplum K(a)p(i)t(ul) ot bahoricʼ nečisʼ (The Story about a Wicked Witch) from the Croatian Glagolitic non-liturgical Petris Miscellany (1468). The introductory section gives a brief overview of the genre-related problems that have arisen from earlier attempts to define the exemplum as a literary genre. It also briefly discusses Eduard Hercigonjaʼs research on the Petris Miscellany as a whole and more recent analyses of individual exempla from the corpus of Croatian Glagolitic literature. The content and structure of the story about a witch who is persuaded by the devil to use a consecrated host for magic is analysed. The story is related to a group of exempla that were very popular in the late Middle Ages and early modern period and deal with the Eucharist and the doctrine of transubstantiation. Drawing on the research of the Austrian ethnologist Leopold Kretzenbacher, the text is compared with a number of similar exempla about the host in a beehive in order to identify variations in the basic plot and the variety of roles played by central motifs from the 12th to the 19th century. Drawing on the findings of Michael Ostlingʼs study of witch trials in early modern Poland, an attempt is made to illuminate various cultural meanings that such texts may have had in the past and their complex influence on popular piety. Based on the insights gained, a parallel text from the Fatević Miscellany (1617) is also discussed in the concluding part of the article.
Copyright (c) 2025 Igor Medić https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Every Evil Hides a Blessing–The Phenomenon of Evil inCroatian Dialect Phraseology
In phraseology, a greater number of negatively connoted idioms are observed, which express undesirable attributes, behaviours, traits, or values. This study focuses specifically on idioms from this spectrum that convey malice or evilness. Separately, idioms containing the lexeme “evil” in their structure are also examined. The problem of evil is thus approached at the level of expression and content, establishing its conceptualisation and motivation in phraseology. In this context, the idiom is understood in a broader sense, and examples of other shorter forms, such as proverbs, are also included. The aim of the study is to determine the meanings realised by the component “evil” in Croatian phraseology, as well as which components are most frequent in its expression, thereby shaping human perception of certain phenomena and realities that surround them. The material presented in the study is partly excerpted from written sources and partly collected through targeted field research. The presented examples cover a wider speaking area, that is, the material from all three Croatian dialects is attested. This method establishes the distribution of specific idioms, that is, their attestation at the level of the Croatian language as a whole (and beyond) or exclusively within a particular dialect. It should be emphasised that regionally specific idioms can only be collected and identified through targeted fieldwork, which further highlights the importance of dialectal phraseology research within the Croatian language.
Croatian Students and English Path Verbs – Evidence of Positive and Negative Transfer
Both English and Croatian are satellite-framed languages, yet they differ significantly in how they express spatial relations. This contrast is particularly noticeable when comparing English path verbs and their Croatian counterparts. Croatian learners of English often struggle with using prepositions alongside certain English path verbs, leading to the production of incorrect sentences. However, with other English path verbs, their usage of prepositions tends to be accurate. This behavioural study aimed to investigate whether these difficulties might be attributed to transfer from Croatian. A total of 82 subjects participated and solved a cloze test containing path and manner verbs. The results suggest that strong negative transfer occurs with English path verbs whose Croatian equivalents are prefixed motion verbs governing prepositions cognate with their prefixes. Conversely, positive transfer occurs in the case of English path verbs whose Croatian equivalents are either prefixed or unprefixed verbs not accompanied by prepositions. These insights may prove valuable in shaping more effective methods for teaching prepositions.
Negative Stereotypes about Women in Gender-Marked Phrases of Rožaje’s Speech
In this paper, negative stereotypes about women are analysed in the gendered idioms of Rožaje’s speech. The phrases, as part of an organic idiom, provide an insight into the ways of conceptualising the female gender. By analysing them, we try to show how sociocultural perception of women is reflected in language. The research was conducted on a corpus of sixty idioms, which refer to women and their position in the sociocultural model, collected by field research in the Rožaje speaking area during 2023 and 2024. The phrases contain an image of women based on stereotypes and prejudices, which arose from a male-centric or deformed social representation. The aim of this paper is to determine examples of negative gender stereotypes related to women in the idioms of Rožaje’s speech, which have the potential to shape the collective image of women. Semantic analysis of the corpus was carried out by interpreting the phrases motivated by stereotypes. The phrases are analysed according to the type of the stereotype they represent, and the findings are presented in several subsections in the paper. The research shows that, in phraseology, women are represented as intellectually limited, talkative, quarrelsome and argumentative, reckless and unreliable, promiscuous and immoral, as well as evil, cunning, and deceitful beings. It is also concluded that they are presented as emotionally and physically weaker beings, who are in general inferior and subordinate. The results of the analysis indicate that phraseology reflects pronounced misogyny and sexist patterns in the perception of the female gender.
Linguistic Advice of the Journal Jezik during the Editorship of Ljudevit Jonke
Nowadays, language consultancy follows trends, so advice is published in the media, on different platforms, social groups, and alike. However, in the past, advice was only published in language consultants, or in magazines, which often depicted useful language interests and ruling linguistic attitudes. In this context, we can also talk about the history of language counselling, with the literature generally dividing it into four periods (Rišner 2006, Protuđer 2011, Baraban 2018, etc.). In this paper, the focus will be precisely on the period after the Second World War, that is, from 1952, when the journal Jezik was launched, which was seldom mentioned in the literature, but was extremely fruitful in terms of advice. Ljudevit Jonke was the editor-in-chief of Jezik from its foundation until 1970. During that period, together with his colleagues and members of the editorial board, he wrote, among other things, language tips. This paper provides an overview of the tips given in the Questions and Answers section, as well as relevant articles. In this review, particular attention will be given to articles– that is, as indicated, to readers’ questions addressed to the journal Jezik and to the section Linguistic Advice, which featured responses by prominent Croatian linguists led by Ljudevit Jonke and Mate Hraste, Milan Moguš, Petar Skok, Josip Hamm, Josip Vončina, Božidar Finka, Rikard Simeon, Slavko Pavešić, Zlatko Vince, Stjepan Babić, Vladimir Anić, as well as contributions by other linguists, including those from the former Yugoslavia.
Copyright (c) 2026 Slavica Vrsaljko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The field of Croatian accentual studies is not coherent. Accent confuses both ordinary language users and language experts. This paper offers a contribution to the establishment of a normative stress pattern for noun formations derived through zero suffixation. Its primary objective is to trace the spread of the secondary long rising accent characteristic of the pónos and pródor type, as well as its encroachment upon the original short rising accent of the pònos and pròdor type in Croatian monolingual dictionaries. Furthermore, by comparing codified and attested stress patterns, the study also seeks to identify developmental trends within standard Croatian prosody as manifested in a corpus of relevant derivations– specifically, disyllabic masculine nouns formed by zero suffixation from verbs with originally short prefixes. The analysis reveals that, although the short rising accent remains present in monolingual dictionaries, its retention is not as consistent as in earlier bilingual dictionaries. There is frequent oscillation between the two rising accents, and doublets often emerge under the influence of analogy (e.g., dòpis and dópis, by analogy with zápis). The inconsistencies among dictionaries suggest an ongoing prosodic realignment. Examination of standard pronunciation practices indicates that the long rising accent is increasingly gaining ground and displacing the short rising variant–particularly in derivations with certain prefixes (e.g., do-, po-, pro-), and especially in more recent coinages, many of which are technical or specialised terms (e.g., dópis, pógon, prómet, úred). When choosing between the codified accentuation and the accentuation that has been verified in the Western Neo-Štokavian pronunciation, it is the latter than should be given priority.
Copyright (c) 2026 Helena Delaš https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
About the Authors, Motivations, and Perspective in Croatian Dialectal Lexicography
In more than one hundred years of Croatian dialectal lexicography, significant achievements have been made. While dictionaries were published sporadically until the last decade of the twentieth century, mostly as additions to other publications or in specialised journals, and less frequently as standalone works, the number of dictionaries has multiplied since the independence of the Republic of Croatia. A positive development in the dictionary-making process has been the rapid advancement of personal computers and software programs that allow the relatively easy technical production of dictionaries. Among dialectal lexicographers, most are amateurs who are motivated by various internal factors to create dictionaries of Croatian local dialects, smaller and larger areas, or entire dialects. By studying the prefaces and afterwords of more than 130 Croatian dialect dictionaries published between 1957 and the present, one can identify and group the motivations of their authors, and based on the most basic biographical data of the authors, one can also partially predict the development of Croatian dialectal lexicography.
Functions and Actualisation of the Hero Character in Fairy Tales from the Neretva Valley
Seven manuscript collections contain folklore material collected through field research by the employees of the former Institute of Folk Art Zagreb in the middle of the last century in the Neretva Valley. The two manuscript collections by Maja Bošković-Stulli (1956 and 1964) are the only ones to contain fairy tales, along with other prose forms, whereas only the manuscript collections by Nikola Bonifačić Rožin and Ivan Ivančan contain legends, anecdotes, and legendary tales collected in the aforementioned area. An examination of the material has shown that the two manuscript collections by Maja Bošković-Stulli are relevant for the selection of the material studied in this paper. A total of twenty fairy tales can be identified in both collections: of these, eight feature a young man as the hero, and twelve have a heroine, or a girl, as the main character. Due to the format of the paper in the journal, the study will focus on a young man who fulfils the functions of the fairy tale hero. The paper focuses on the principles and methods of the hero’s realisation in overcoming tasks and challenges, as well as on the hero’s attributes. They are realised through physical strength, strength of mind/cunning, and magical help. Specific motives for the realisation of the young man as a hero of a fairy tale will be studied in order to determine the ways in which these three different paths of the hero are realised. The analysis of character functions will use the cultural-historical method to show the laws of shaping the hero’s world in the context of the feudal Middle Ages, the socio-historical method to study the way in which the hero’s character achieves a rise on the social ladder with a focus on the psychoanalytic and mythological approach to attempt to point out motifs of archetypal value in the context of psychoanalytic reading of fairy tales.
Contribution to the Analysis of Two Pasolini Plays–Calderón and Svinjac (Porcile)
This paper examines the distinctive characteristics encountered in the plays written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Calderón and Svinjac (Porcile), whose translations were published in 2022 by the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb. Among the themes presented in the plays, it is crucial to highlight the theme of the unconscious, the motif of Pasolini’s family situation reproduced in his plays, the related motif of incest, as well as the motif of rebellion against power. The theme of the unconscious has always been present in his oeuvre, in his early poems, such as those dedicated to his mother, then in his youthful plays, in which his family situation is often reproduced, and also in his films, particularly in his “mythological” films. His relationship with the mother acquires an incestuous undertone, especially in the films such as Mamma Roma, but also in the tragedy Calderón, in which the incestuous relationships mother-son and father-daughter are implied and realised in dreams. The motif of rebellion against power is related to the motif of freely chosen death as the ultimate form of expression in Svinjac (Porcile), in which the protagonist’s suicide evokes and foreshadows Pasolini’s tragic death.
Pedagogical Translation as an Instrument for the Development of Plurilinguistic and Intercultural Competence
In contemporary foreign language teaching two communication activities, interaction and mediation are added to traditional receptive and productive competences, thus emphasising the importance of linguistic mediation between different languages and cultures (CEFR CV 2020). Expanding students’ linguistic repertoire includes not only the use of their mother tongue but also that of additional languages, as demonstrated by the renewed interest in researching translation as a teaching strategy. In this research, the opinions of foreign language teachers (level A1-B2) at the University of Zadar were examined. The survey comprised questions regarding the use and role of mother tongue and translation in foreign language teaching: whether teachers use them to develop linguistic and intercultural competence, or exclusively as a tool of classroom discourse. Taking into consideration the guidelines of the Council of Europe and the expanding plurilingual context, the research investigated how students’ and teachers’ knowledge of a second, third, or additional languages can be used to facilitate the acquisition of a new foreign language. Finally, based on the research results, presented as both quantitative and qualitative data, key conclusions were drawn regarding the current use of the mother tongue and translation as a teaching strategy in the instruction of a third or additional foreign language, with the aim of facilitating the development of students’ multilingual and intercultural competences.
multilingual and intercultural competence
Allegorisation in Mary’s Miracles as a Sign of “the New Sensitivity” of the Middle Ages
The paper analyses the stories about Mary’s miracles published in the collection Mirakuli slavne deve Marije (Senj, 1508). The analysis focuses mainly on themes, motives, and ideas. By recognising the allegorical meanings of individual stories and the collection as a whole, miracles are reinterpreted as a special medieval literary genre, thus attempting to affirm their value not only within the framework of folk theology and literature inspired by folk sermons, but also concerning their aesthetic characteristics and new spirituality, s well as “new sensitivity” of the Middle Ages (term used in Dürrigl 2013) potentially interesting to readers of the twenty-first century. The theoretical background of the paper comes primarily from literary studies, explaining the poetic features of miracles and insights that reveal the multi-layered nature of allegory. Since allegory encompasses and arises from other disciplines such as theology and biblical exegesis, and since it concerns Mary’s miracles, the paper partly relies on medieval and contemporary church documents on the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the history of salvation. The paper aims to analyse the power of allegory as a figure and literary genre in the context of the new medieval perception of God, showing that allegorisation, as the process of assigning allegorical meaning, combines ethical and aesthetic components. Consequently, these short texts – hitherto perceived as examples of naive, entertaining, and somewhat bizarre, religious literature – also show the potential for discovering and experiencing a beautiful, harmonious, picturesque, and imaginative literary and artistic world.
Contribution to the Study of the Language of Ante Kuzmanić
During the very turbulent linguistic period of the second half of the nineteenth century, the Handbook for Midwifery with the Dictionary of Artistic Terms and Folk Phrases (1875) was published by Ante Kuzmanić, a respected physician, politician, editor, and philologist, one of the dominant representatives of the Zadar philological circle. The aim of the work is to describe the language used in his handbook through a comprehensive graphic, orthographic, and linguistic analysis (phonological, morphological, and syntactic) and thus contribute to linguistic and historical research. By reconstructing and describing the language system that Kuzmanić uses in his Handbook, we gain a better insight into the linguistic trends in the Kingdom of Dalmatia and determine which linguistic solutions Kuzmanić favoured and how much the language of the studied corpus differed from the norm of the second half of the nineteenth century.
graphic, orthographic and linguistic analysis
Further on the ‘Good Italian Soldier’” – Luigi Carmagnani: Lettere Dalla Guerra (1940–1941). Campagne Militari di Jugoslavia e Russia
The article, in light of the study of the myth of the good Italian soldier–the so-called autostereotype and heterostereotype that seeks to portray the Italian soldier in occupied territories during the Second World War as a friendly antimilitarist forced into military uniform–focuses on the wartime journey of Italian lieutenant Luigi Carmagnani, reconstructed through letters he sent to his parents in 1940 and 1941 from the Yugoslav and Russian fronts. The narrative of this one-way correspondence with his parents can be thematically and stylistically interpreted through the lens of epistolary writing from the period of the Italian occupation of Dalmatia, during which the war is experienced as a distant conflict. In this context, the thesis put forward by some Italian historians about the absence of exoticisation and dehumanisation of the enemy in the early months of the war seems justified. This contrasts with the letters sent from the Russian front, from the very centre of the war zone, where–after experiencing personal danger–Carmagnani’s ideological convictions come to the fore, shaped by the idea of a liberating and civilising mission in Russia. Particular attention is given to the editor of the epistolary collection, Giorgio Soffiantini, who represents an important mediating instance in the enunciation process and, consequently, in the perception of the published letters. Soffiantini’s commentary on Carmagnani’s wartime journey is grounded in the axiom of love for the homeland as the sole imperative, whereby the criteria enabling the experience of a given historical period are not based on rational knowledge, but rather on mythical thinking– the very fuel of the myth of the good Italian soldier.
Italian campaign in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union
This paper analyses Arkadij Adamov’s The Case of the Motley Crew (Delo “pëstryh”, 1956) as a distinct Soviet variant of the police procedural. Adopting a comparative genre approach and close structural reading, it examines how the novel incorporates core features such as a collective protagonist, methodical investigation, multiple criminal threads, procedural realism, and bureaucratic language. However, it departs significantly from Western models by framing investigation as an ideological mission. The miliciâ is portrayed not only as an institution responsible for maintaining order but also as a pedagogical force dedicated to re-education and the reinforcement of socialist values. Adamov structures policing across three concentric spheres: the professional investigative team, civic collaborators who emulate miliciâ methods, and a broader ideological collective whose vigilance legitimises law enforcement and blurs the boundary between civic duty and policing. Criminality is presented as a systemic threat linked to historical forces such as bourgeois opportunism and foreign subversion. By merging procedural conventions with socialist pedagogy, the novel transforms criminal investigation into a struggle over moral and political allegiance and demonstrates the genre’s potential to shape visions of collective identity and social order.
The paper deals with the importance of the Old Testament Slavonic Pseudepigrapha as a source of cultural information that might have influenced contemporary thinking and culture. The evil character analysed in the article can be found in the two Old Testament Slavonic Pseudepigrapha: The Apocalypse of Abraham and 2 Enoch. The character’s name is Azazel, and it is widely known nowadays thanks to its echo in Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita, as well as in Akunin’s novel Azazel, which was translated into English under the title The Winter Queen. The paper explains how the character of Azazel is presented in the Old Testament Slavonic Pseudepigrapha, and it highlights the significant transformation of its role from one Old Slavonic text to the other. The paper also discusses the origin of the expression scapegoat in Russian.
By addressing the relationship between good and evil on an ontological, philosophical, or theological level, a phenomenon of evil has risen to the level of cultural universality. Out of any temporal, spatial, or social framework, it has received a transformational character, which is the reason why interpretations of its aspects can no longer be based solely on a narrow approach. Taking into account that the phenomenon of evil is manifold, the paper seeks to determine how it is manifested in the novel Črna mati zemla by Kristian Novak. The methodological and theoretical assumptions of the research are based on the works of Eagleton, Svendsen, Bauman, Žižek, and others, whose analysis aims to show that evil is represented through the psychological state of the main character Matija (the appearance of demonic characters), but also through a fictional depiction of tragic events of suicide in Matija’s village. The aim of the paper is to determine how the character destruction is connected with the appearance of evil and its principle.
Tebi što bezobzirno misliš, što si uvijek u potrazi za dnom i što si bez straha od poraza. Tebi, dosljedni bezvjerče… (Feđa Šehović, Uvod u tvrđavu)
Hrvatskoglagoljski Ars bene moriendi: Meštrija dobra umrtija s ritualom
Meštrija dobra umrtija s ritualom. Senj, 1507./1508. Latinički prijepis glagoljskog izvornika. Uredili: Ivana Eterović i Juraj Matej Kovač. Zagreb: Nacionalna i sveučilišna knjižnica, 2024., str. 158 + ilustracija str. 159.
Znanstveni doprinos glotodidaktičkim istraživanjima hrvatskoga jezika
Marijana Bašić, Sanja Baričević: Ini jezik hrvatski. Zadar: Sveučilište u Zadru. 2024. ISBN: 978-953-331-480-S
Ovladavanje jezikom kao temeljno ljudsko pravo
Marko Alerić: Pravo na jezik. Zagreb: Školska knjiga. 2024. ISBN 978-953-0-62342-2
Előd Dudás: Od povijesti jezika do jezične politike. Budapest: ELTE BTK Szláv Filológiai Tanszék. 2023. ISBN: 978-963-489-642-5
Hrvatski romantičarski putopis iz poljske perspektive
Krystyna Pieniążek-Marković: Smak drogi. Podróże chorwackiego romantyzmu (1839–1860).Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2023.
Genitive Plural as a Lexicographic Problem: the Example of Croatian Nouns of the e-Declension Ending in a Consonant Cluster
The paper analyses dictionary descriptions of the genitive plural forms of feminine nouns of the e-declension with a stem-final consonant cluster. The analysis is based on four monolingual dictionaries of the contemporary Croatian language. In genitive plural, these nouns are overabundant and may have the formatives -ā, -ī (crkvā, crkvī ‘church’), or the formative -ā with the epenthetic ā inserted into the stem final consonant cluster (crkāvā). Based on an analysis of approximately 300 most common nouns of this type, we have shown similarities and differences within and between dictionaries in the ways the overabundant forms are attested and presented. The analysis has also shown that the dictionaries are similar in that they list variant forms relatively systematically and in a manner that is in line with the grammatical rules of standard language. This concerns both the choice of combinations of endings (the ending -ī is never given as the only ending), as well as the order of variant forms (the ending -ī is never listed as the first one). It has also been shown that the dictionaries systematically list forms in -ī for most nouns and that in the dictionaries there exists a stable core of nouns that use the formative -ā-ā. Dictionaries, however, differ in some details. This concerns, for example, the triple forms, with some dictionaries systematically citing such forms (crkāvā, crkvā, crkvī), whereas others only list the first and third forms (crkāvā, crkvī) while avoiding the second one (crkvā). The greatest dispersion in presentation is found with the ending -ā without epenthesis, which is most likely a consequence of its decreasing share in actual use with this subtype of feminine nouns. The paper also provides a comparison with the corpus data from the Riznica and hrWaC corpora (subcorpus forum.hr). This has shown that multiple forms are less commonly attested there than in the dictionaries, with the presence of the ending -ī being even more pronounced in corpora, while the core of nouns with the formative -ā-ā is somewhat reduced, but still stable.