Kristijanovićeve kajkavske prerade Ezopa: Raščlamba devet parova basni iz Danice zagrebečke i Ezopuševih basni pohorvačenih

The paper compares nine pairs of Kajkavian adaptations of Aesop’s fables. They were reworked by Ignac Kristijanović, the last fighter for the Kajkavian literary language, and published in the Kajkavian calendar Danica zagrebečka (1842–1848) and in the book Ezopove basne pohorvačene (1843). At first glance, it is obvious that the fables published in the book are shorter, and Olga Šojat mentioned the content and stylistic differences between the fables from Danica and the book, while Joža Skok emphasized that shorter fables have more Kajkavian elements. The first statement required an analysis of the content and structure, and the second a linguistic comparison of the two types of fables at all language levels. The analysis of the structure and content was approached from the point of view of the reception theory, which focuses on the reader of the literary work. Fables were analyzed by the method of comparison, and the findings of fable theorists and historians were applied to the observed components. The theoretical framework of language analysis was historical sociolinguistics, which seeks to fit and observe language problems in a broader sociohistorical context. The combination of three sociolinguistic methods, the analysis of variance in the same text, in its versions, and in other texts by the same author, sought to answer the question of how much Kristijanović’s language in the book differs from the language in Danica and to confirm or refute Skok’s claim that Kristijanović made his texts in Danica more Štokavian.