The Protean Character of Reception of Classical Antiquity in the 18th-century Serbian Culture

Having a starting point in the fact that in the Early Modern Age – that is from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment – the reception of classical, i.e. Graeco-Roman antiquity, unlike any other phenomenon, mirrored the trends of cultural history, this paper examines the mentioned reception in Serbian culture of the epoch. Due to civilizational lag, this epoch of Serbian culture is reduced to only one century in which most of early modern European intellectual and artistic concepts appeared on the horizon of Serbian cultural activists (humanism, baroque, Enlightenment, neoclassicism, sentimentalism); however, all these intellectuals and artists had one thing in common: more or less, they referred to classical antiquity. Giving some striking examples, the paper demonstrates how classical antiquity – idealized in perception and selectively approached in reception – was (ab)used for the purposes of different cultural programs, not infrequently opposite one to another. At the same time, it is demonstrated how practically all variety of terms applied in the Early Modern Age for designation of reception of classical antiquity – namely (classical) humanism (Christian and secular), classicism, classical tradition, philhellenism – are suitable labels for the complex case of the 18th century-Serbian culture, even in the matter of a single cultural activist, as was Dositej Obradović.