Projects / Programmes
Jesuit Plays as a Factor in the Development of Early Modern Drama: The Slovenian and Central European Context
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 6.07.00 |
Humanities |
Literary sciences |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| H390 |
Humanities |
General and comparative literature, literary criticism, literary theory |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 6.02 |
Humanities |
Languages and Literature |
Jesuit theatre, Early modern European drama, Jesuit dramatic texts, Slovenian Baroque literature, literary history, theatre history
Researchers (1)
| no. |
Code |
Name and surname |
Research area |
Role |
Period |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
29396 |
PhD Monika Deželak Trojar |
Literary sciences |
Head |
2018 - 2020 |
120 |
Organisations (1)
Abstract
Jesuit theatre was the most successful and enduring theatre institution of the European early modern period (from c. 1555 to 1773). Initially relying on Latin humanist drama, Jesuit theatre evolved into a significant pedagogical-didactic and religious-propagandist medium and established two principal types of theatre performances: school plays and religious plays. Jesuit dramatic and theatre work also influenced cultural development of the Slovenian ethnic territory. It is agreed that the Jesuit theatre of the historical Slovenian lands (Carniola, Carinthia, Gorizia, Styria) was the first to achieve certain continuity. Notwithstanding this consensus and the fact that Jesuit theatrical activities are recorded in reliable historical sources, general studies of Slovenian drama devote little space to them, while they are almost non-existent in the wider consciousness. Through a detailed research into primary sources and comparisons with Central European contexts, the proposed project aims to prove that Jesuit drama and theatre belong to the most important factors of theatre history in Slovenia.
The project will focus on Jesuit dramatic activities in the Ljubljana College of the Society of Jesus from its foundation (1597) to the dissolution of the order in 1773. The research will also include the playwriting of the neighbouring colleges (Graz, Klagenfurt, Gorizia and Trieste) and the links with the theatre life of the other colleges of the then Austrian Jesuit Province (the territory of today’s Central and partly South-eastern Europe), primarily with Vienna as their centre.
A constitutive part of the project will be to register and elucidate Jesuit and non-Jesuit sources that have been thus far overlooked or neglected. On this basis, a digital repository of preserved titles of plays, periochae (a kind of early theatre programmes with short summaries of the plays and lists of actors) and manuscript and printed Jesuit plays performed in Ljubljana will be prepared. Having thoroughly analysed the sources, the study will attempt an interpretation of the themes and genre typology of the performed plays with regard to the occasions when they were performed. It will consider both main types of Jesuit drama (school and religious performances) and examine the issue of the use of the Slovenian vernacular in the predominantly Latin Jesuit theatre.
To better understand the purpose and goals that the Jesuit order wanted to achieve via its drama and theatre, the project will investigate Jesuit programmatic texts and their theoretical views on theatre.
The most prominent representatives of Jesuit drama in the historical Slovenian lands will be carefully studied. The project will examine the occurrence of plays with similar themes within the Austrian Jesuit Province and make conclusions about their interdependence. The comparative aspect of the study will show how the Jesuit drama from the Slovenian ethnic territory is situated into a wider European context.
Using a functional interdisciplinary synthesis of various philological and historical methods (from textual criticism through theatre history to digital humanities), the proposed project is to demonstrate the following: first, Jesuit drama in the Slovenian lands in the early modern period was an important factor of the general cultural development; second, it awoke an aesthetic perception of theatre and drama; third, it created foundations for the subsequent development of Slovenian theatre culture. Since Jesuit drama in the Slovenian lands was part of the universal European Jesuit theatre, the research findings will be also relevant to European scholarly and general audiences.
Significance for science
Up until now Slovenian literary and theatrical history sought the origins of theatre (in today’s sense) in Slovenia at the time of the visits of German and Italian travelling theatre groups from the mid-17th century onwards. The proposed research project will demonstrate that the actual beginning of theatre in the Slovenian lands dates back to at least half a century earlier (at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries). It will emphasise the importance of Jesuit drama to the Slovenian environment and prove the existence of written dramatic tradition in the territories of the historical Slovenian lands as early as the 17th century.
The important originality of the proposed research will be the stress on the Jesuit theoretical self-definition of dramatic activity and the inclusion of primary sources, which researchers have not focused on yet. Since the research will take account of so far unknown historical and literary sources, the findings will originally and significantly broaden the knowledge of early modern drama in Slovenia and Europe. The newly uncovered materials will extend the textual corpus of early modern and Baroque literature in the Slovenian lands as well as enable and facilitate the research into its integration in a wider European context.
The expected results will have an influence on Slovenian theatrical, literary and cultural history and ethnography. Moreover, the close connections with the European Jesuit dramatic tradition will also complement European dramatic repertory (new titles, newly discovered periochae and plays). The project findings will allow for a more comprehensive understanding of Baroque literary and cultural activities of the Slovenian territory and provide a thematically broad scholarly apparatus for a new synthesis of the theatrical and literary activities in the Slovenian lands from the late 16th to the 18th centuries.
Significance for the country
The scholarly digital critical edition of the play Haeresis fulminata by the Carniolan polymath, historian and preacher J. L. Schönleben, which will be published (as a facsimile and diplomatic transcription, in translation and with an introductory study) on the online portal eZISS, and the online digital repository, which will provide information on the plays from the Ljubljana College of the Society of Jesus, will both be freely accessible online and thus available to Slovenian and international researchers in the fields of literary history, the history of theatre and other disciplines (ethnography, historiography, cultural history, etc.). Moreover, the digital repository as part of the online portal eZMono and NRSS will be the first digital archive of preserved Ljubljana Jesuit plays and periochae as well as the titles of the performed Ljubljana plays in Slovenia. The online media, together with scholarly articles, will highlight the importance of Jesuit drama to the theatrical and cultural development of Slovenia, and they will also enable the inclusion of the topic in higher education. The translation of Schönleben’s play Haeresis fulminata into Slovenian opens up the possibility of historically reconstructing Jesuit Baroque theatre, for instance, in the form of a lesson for secondary-school students and for anybody interested in theatre. Also, the play could be suggested for performance to a Slovenian theatre company. The project findings will establish a new research field and encourage further investigation into the history of performance arts in Slovenia.
Most important scientific results
Interim report,
final report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Interim report,
final report
