After the gimnasium in Dubrovnik, he attained studies of classic Philology and Slavistics in Vienna. He worked as a high-school professor in Koper, Zadar and Split, and later a professor of Slavistics on universities of Vienna and Zagreb). He also edited the Croatian edition of "List drevnih zakona" magazine. Rešetar was a student of Vatroslav Jagić.1 After retirement, he moved to Florence where he died 1942.
The main areas of his works included dialectology and accentology of South Slavic languages , as well as philologically impeccable editions of older, 15th to 18th century Croatian writers for the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (then called "Yugoslav", "jugoslavenska") edition "Stari pisci hrvatski"/old Croatian writers".
He was one of founders of South-Slavic dialectics, investigating features of Štokavian dialects (Der Štokawische Dialect, Vienna, 1907) and Čakavian dialects, and also wrote a monography about Molise Croatian dialect. He was also engaged in the field of numismatics (Dubrovačka numizmatika, 1924-1925), inheriting the interest and coin collection from his father Pavle.
His most important works include:
"Čakavština i njene nekadašnje i sadašnje granice" (Čakavian Dialect, its Past and Present Boundaries)
"Štokavski dijalekat" (Štokavian Dialect)
"Najstariji dubrovački govor" (Oldest Dialects of Dubrovnik)
"Najstarija dubrovačka proza" (Oldest Literature of Dubrovnik).
His works in this area are, with a few exceptions, superseded by later areal linguistics and historical dialectology research. On the other hand, Rešetar's editions of the Renaissance and Baroque poets and playwrights are still the standard printed issues-only modern computerized textology analyses, done in the Institute for Croatian language and linguistics, have begun to question some aspects of his transliteration choices on the graphemics level. The big part of his work in this area remains highly regarded and confirmed by contemporary textology.
On the other hand, some of his work remained unprecise (in the text where he claims that Čakavian dialect of Croatian was never spoken in Dubrovnik). Second, his scientifical attitudes towards Štokavian-Ijekavian dialect of Croatian language in Dubrovnik were driven by his political motives - Rešetar belonged to the freshly organized political movement in Dubrovnik, financed from Serbia, called "Serb Catholics".2 Later he changed his declaring by nationality into "Yugoslav".
