The Role of Poetry in the Early Nineteenth-Century Slavonic Language Revivals

The nationalism that marked the first half of nineteenth-century Europe's history focused on reform & revival of national langs, often through modernizing an ancient literary language or devising an orthography by which the vernacular could be written. Three goals were pursued: (1) each lang must express the individuality of its speakers, (2) the language must be stable in form & acceptable to its speakers, & (3) the language must be capable of coping with the growth of modern society. The Slavonic languages all needed reworking in one or more of these areas, although in most cases a literary lang had been used at some time in the lang's history. The Czechs revived their ancient literary lang, & the writers of this era often varied with respect to its manifestation. The Croats, with a multiplicity of literary dialects, chose one to prevail as a national literary lang. The Slovaks achieved stability & familiarity with a single literary vernacular. Slovene nationalism had no literary tradition on which to focus. The journal Krajnska cbelica provided a role model for the formation of a literary lang. Poetry played a central role in the development of all Slavonic national langs, but was most important in Slovene development. T. Lamb