Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations: With a Sketch of Their Popular Poetry — John Shaqi
Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations: With a Sketch of Their Popular PoetryTalvj
History
Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations: With a Sketch of Their Popular Poetry
Talvj
Folk songs, Slavic; Slavic languages -- History; Slavic literature -- History and criticism
Such other works in Old Slavic, as were the productions of this
period, seem rather to belong to the history of the Russian and
Servian literature. We have seen from the preceding, that the Old
Slavic had altered considerably; nay, was in a certain measure
amalgamated with those dialects. We shall see in the sequel, how it
was gradually supplanted by them.[22]
The printing of works in the Old Slavic, at the present day, is almost
exclusively limited to the Bible and to what is in immediate
connection with it. The first printed Slavonic work was set in
Glagolitic letters. This was a missal of A.D. 1483.[23] The earliest
Cyrillic printing office was founded about A.D. 1490, at Kracow, by
Svaipold Feol. Nearly at the same time, 1492, they began in Servia and
Herzegovina to print with Cyrillic types. In A.D. 1518, a
Cyrillic-Slavonic printing office was established at Venice; and about
the same time, a part of the Old Testament in the White-Russian
dialect, printed with Cyrillic letters, was published at Prague in
Bohemia.
In Russia, now the principal seat of the eastern Slavic literature,
printing was not introduced until after the middle of the sixteenth
century. The first work was published in Moscow A.D. 1564, an edition
of the _Apostle_, executed by the united skill of two printers. It
would seem, however, that they did not succeed in Russia; for a few
years after we find one of them in Lemberg, occupied in printing the
same book; and the other at Wilna, in printing the Gospels. In Russia,
the Gospels were printed for the first time in A.D. 1606. The first
complete Slavonic Bible was published at Ostrog in Volhynia (Poland)
A.D. 1581, fol. printed after the manuscript of 1499, which also was
the first that comprehended the whole Bible.[24] The second edition of
the whole Slavonic Bible was printed eighty-two years later, at
Moscow, A.D. 1663. An enumeration of all the subsequent editions, is
given in the note below.[25]
The philological part of the church Slavonic language was not
cultivated so early as would have been desirable. There exists however
a grammar by Zizania, published A.D. 1596 in Warsaw. Twenty years
afterwards another by M. Smotrisky appeared, Wilna 1618. This work,
written like Zizania's grammar in the White-Russian dialect,[26] was
for a long time considered as of good authority; it reappeared in
several editions, and served as the basis of most of the grammars
written during the 17th and 18th centuries. M. Stroyeff found in the
Paris library the manuscript of an Old Slavic grammar, written in
Latin by John Uzewicz, a Student of Theology at the University of
Paris in 1643. In the year 1822, Dobrovsky published his
_Institutiones Linguæ Slavicæ dialecti vcteris_, a grammatical work
which, like all the productions of this distinguished scholar, throws
a new light upon the subject, and renders all former works of a
similar character useless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account