page_title: Republic of Ragusa
section_title: Ragusan literature
hierarchical_section_title: Republic of Ragusa / Languages and literature / Ragusan literature
caption_attribution_description: A cover of the 1622 edition of the work, see w:Tears of the Prodigal Son
context_page_description: The Republic of Ragusa was an aristocratic maritime republic centered on the city of Dubrovnik in Dalmatia that carried that name from 1358 until 1808. It reached its commercial peak in the 15th and the 16th centuries, before being conquered by Napoleon's French Empire and formally annexed by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy in 1808. It had a population of about 30,000 people, of whom 5,000 lived within the city walls. Its Latin motto was "Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro", which means "Liberty is not sold for all the gold in the world".
context_section_description: Ragusan literature, in which Latin, Italian and Croatian languages coexisted, blossomed in the 15th and 16th centuries.
  According to Graubard:
  During the Renaissance era, Venetian-ruled Dalmatia and Ragusa gave birth to influential intellectuals – mostly minor aristocrats and clergymen, Jesuits especially – who kept alive the memory of Croatia and the Croatian language when they composed or translated plays and books from Italian and Latin into the vernacular. No matter that the dialects of Dalmatia and Dubrovnik were different from each other ... and both these dialects were somewhat different from the dialect of Zagreb, capital of the Habsburg-ruled north. They still thought of it as Croatian. ... The Dubrovnik poet Dominko Zlatarić (1555–1610) explained on the frontispiece of his 1597 translation of Sophocles' tragedy Elektra and Tasso's Aminta that it had been "iz veće tudieh jezika u Hrvacki izlozene," "translated from more foreign languages in Croatian.
  Literary works of famous Ragusans were written in both Croatian and Italian. Among them are the works of writers Džore Držić (Giorgio Darza), Marin Držić (Marino Darza), Ivan Bunić Vučić (Giovanni Serafino Bona), Ignjat Đurđević (Ignazio Giorgi), Ivan Gundulić (Ivano Gondola), Šišmundo (Šiško) Menčetić (Sigismondo Menze), and Dinko Ranjina (Domenico Ragnina).
  The Croatian language works from the Republic of Ragusa had a large role in the developing of Croatian literature and the modern Croatian language, Dubrovnik Shtokavian dialect having been basis for the Standard Croatian language. Writers from the 16th to the 19th century (before the Age of Romantic National Awakenings) that were explicit in declaring themselves as Croats and their language as Croatian included Vladislav Menčetić, Dominko (Dinko) Zlatarić, Bernardin Pavlović, Mavro Vetranović, Nikola Nalješković, Junije Palmotić, Jakov Mikalja, Joakim Stulli, Marko Bruerović, Peter Ignaz Sorgo, Antun Sorkočević (1749–1826), and Franatica Sorkočević (1706–71).
  The legacy of Ragusan literature also influenced Serbian literature, especially thanks to the members of the Serb-Catholic movement, such as Matija Ban, Vid Vuletić Vukasović and Ivo Vojnović.
caption: Tears of the Prodigal Son, cover of the 1622 edition by Ivan Gundulić, Croatian Baroque poet
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