About the Project

The project focuses on the reinterpretation of Croatian-language school manuals from the mid-19th to the early decades of the 20th century within the context of new historiographical, philosophical, and philological paradigms that move away from Magyarization and Germanization as continuous linguistic policies of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy aimed at linguistic assimilation. This approach is especially significant considering that, following the Croatian-Hungarian Settlement (1868) and the enactment of the School Act of 1874, the Croatian language became both the official and the language of instruction. From the perspective of these changed historiographical and philological paradigms, Croatian-language school manuals will be reinterpreted within the project through descriptive, analytical, and comparative methods, examined from linguistic, methodological, literary-theoretical, literary-historical, ethical, bioethical, and philosophical standpoints, as well as from the perspectives of music education and the visual and graphic design of school manuals. Such a comprehensive approach will also contribute to a fuller understanding of the Croatian educational pyramid, which, at the end of the 19th century, underwent significant reforms primarily characterized by the process of secularization of the educational system. During this period, the Croatian language in primary and secondary school textbooks, teachers’ manuals, and adult literacy textbooks occupied the position of both source and/or target language, regardless of the place of publication—whether within the Triune Kingdom or beyond its borders. In this regard, the corpus collection will include cooperation with domestic and international cultural, scientific, and heritage institutions located in the historical territory of the former Habsburg Monarchy. The digitization of part of the reinterpreted material will make it accessible to researchers from various scientific disciplines.