Spanish romances from Johann Gottfried Herder's book Volkslieder (1778/1779), Jacob Grimm's (1815) collection Silva de romanes viejos, and their intercultural echoes in Croatia

The article explores the influence of Herder's collection 'Volkslieder' (1778/79) and Spanish ballads of Jakob Grimm on Croatian literature of XIXth century. These texts in which for the very first time the literary terms of 'Ballad' and 'Romance' are used as synonims played an important role in establishing the genre of literary romance in Croatian Romantic and Posromantic literature. They also influenced the translation practice of Spanish ballads into Croatian. Special attention is payed to the consideration of published and manuscript texts of Croatian poet of Slovene origin Stanko Vraz (1810-1851). The article shows how the Vraz's collection 'Glasi iz dubrave zerovinske' (Voices for the Woods of Love, 1841) follows the example of Herder's collection 'Stimmen der Völker in Leidern' in its multicultural concept as well as in the title of the collection.