Projects / Programmes
Slovenian Literature in Unknown Early Modern Manuscripts.
Information-Technology Aided Analyses and Scholarly Editions
| 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 |
Slovenian literature, manuscripts, Baroque, Enlightenment, digital editing, Digital Humanities
Researchers (12)
Organisations (2)
Abstract
The portion of Slovenian literature between the Reformation and Romanticism that only exists in manuscript form, and whose existence did not rely on the printed book medium, has remained largely unstudied to date. Slovenian literature between the Reformation and Romanticism appears to have been extensively studied, discussed, and made publically accessible by Slovenian literary history. However, this is only true with regard to the most visible part of Slovenian literature that has been handed down in the form of printed books. In addition to this, there was also another layer of literature that has never been published and has remained insufficiently studied to date. Due to the marked and relatively unilateral orientation of Slovenian literary history towards studying printed books—which has its historical reasons (see section 11)—the majority of manuscripts have remained only a marginal and less significant subject. Therefore, Slovenian manuscripts mostly did not enter the system of specialized research, literary reception, and wider cultural awareness. However, given the small number of Slovenian texts between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, manuscripts are also important bearers of textual heritage. They are the more important because everything indicates that certain sections of Slovenian literature vitally depended on manuscript culture even far into the modern age—that is, even as late as the end of the Enlightenment.
The proposed project’s goal is to continue research that has barely commenced and which aims to improve on the current state of affairs and to systematically examine Early Modern Slovenian manuscripts. Work to date has shown that archive collections in Slovenia and ethnically Slovenian cross-border areas (in Italy, Austria, and Croatia) contain several Slovenian manuscript works that literary history has not yet recorded. With regard to these and many other barely known manuscripts, it is uncertain what types of texts they include, what their content is, who their authors are, and so on. They involve part of the Slovenian literary culture that has so far remained in the shadows. Therefore, the goal is to:
Systematically study the potential locations of still unknown manuscripts in Slovenia and in ethnically Slovenian cross-border areas;
Describe the manuscripts discovered using a uniform and internationally established method (the TEI Guidelines) and publish the data in the emerging Register of Slovenian Manuscripts (http://ezb.ijs.si/nrss/);
Analyze the selected texts and publish them in critical editions on the eZISS web portal (http://nl.ijs.si/e-zrc/);
Introduce several improvements into the online manuscript portal; in this regard, a module with transcriptions of entire texts will be especially important because it will form the basis for later critical editions. Processing manuscripts with language technologies for old Slovenian will be implemented, which will significantly enrich the experience of both professional and general users.
The proposed literary-history study of unknown Slovenian manuscripts from the period between the Reformation and Romanticism relies heavily on digital humanities methods. In this regard, the project team’s work is based on its considerable experience with electronic processing, analysis, and presentation of texts, by consistently taking into account international standards and best-practice examples. This research approach has been developed because it makes it possible to present the diverse aspects of Slovenian manuscripts unknown to date in the best way, to explain them professionally, and to make them available to the widest possible reception of Slovenian and Slavic studies on the World Wide Web.
Significance for science
The project’s contribution to Slovenian literary studies and related disciplines in the humanities is evident from the following achievements: An extensive body of manuscript material was examined, digitized, copied, and published; it is freely available on the web portal Manuscripts of Early Moden Slovenian Literature (NRSS, http://ezb.ijs.si/nrss/). Together with analytical descriptions, facsimiles, and diplomatic transcriptions, these manuscripts alone have important scholarly relevance because they significantly change the text base of Slovenian Baroque literature, redefining or expanding the framework within which new studies of Slovenian literature (either overviews or specialized) can take place at all. Of special relevance in this regard are the critical editions that we gradually post on the eZISS portal (http://nl.ijs.si/e-zrc/). The last three editions in particular—the manuscript Cantilenae variae by F. M. Paglovec as the apex of Slovenian Baroque poetry, the Poljane manuscript as the most extensive source of continuous textual tradition from the group of vita Christi manuscripts, and the Kapla Passion Play as the most important representative of the oldest seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Slovenian plays—importantly complement the body of Slovenian Baroque literature with a complete triad of lyrical, epic, and dramatic works. Working on the critical editions also provided high-quality methodological bases for further research: over the course of several years, linguistic principles were developed according to which Baroque texts can be critically edited, so that, on the one hand, they preserve their original historical and dialect phonology, and are accessible to a wide and diverse circle of readers. These principles will be published for the first time ever in the critical edition of the Poljane manuscript and are considered an important contribution to Slovenian studies. The same applies to the method based on which the vocabulary of the Poljane manuscript is compiled in the form of a methodologically exemplary glossary featured in the critical edition. The project’s technological infrastructure is also relevant for literary studies and language technologies. With minor adjustments, it can also handle many other similar projects, such as those including specialist research on printed texts, photographs, and other text or graphic documents. On the outside, the user sees it as the NRSS portal, and on the inside it excels in a detailed adaptation of technological structures and routines to the concepts of literary and linguistic studies. The project also enriched Slovenian studies’ infrastructure with a new book collection titled Dela starejšega slovenskega slovstva (Old Slovenian Literary Works). It was designed as a subcollection within the umbrella series Zbrana dela slovenskih pesnikov in pisateljev (Collected Works of Slovenian Poets and Writers) and is dedicated to older literature being published in electronic critical editions; this collection will only include their critical transcriptions for the public and the edition’s references and footnotes. The first volume in the new subcollection of Zbrana dela features the Kapla Passion Play, and the critical edition of the Poljane manuscript is planned for publication in 2017. Studying the manuscripts and serving as a co-advisor connected the project head with teaching activities at the Faculty of Arts’ Department of Slovenian Studies at the University of Ljubljana. Thus, in 2016, the department accepted the project head’s proposal to dedicate the 2017 edition of the Slovenian studies conference Obdobja (Epochs) to Slovenian manuscripts originating from the middle ages to the long nineteenth century. Hence, due to the attractiveness of the material discovered, manuscript research has now moved from the narrow project group to a wider circle of Slovenian studies researchers, who meet at the annual Obdobja symposium as their main scholarly conference.
Significance for the country
Through its seminal research and manuscript texts published on the NRSS web portal (http://ezb.ijs.si/nrss/), this project has significantly added to the body of knowledge on Slovenian Baroque literature. In this way, it has strengthened the awareness of a continuous tradition of literary production in Slovenian from the sixteenth-century Protestant period through the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Baroque period to the present. Awareness of the uninterrupted continuity of Slovenian literature across nearly five centuries is just as important for Slovenians today as it was in the past. Similar to our other editions, the critical edition Slovenske oporoke in prisežna besedila o oporokah (Slovenian Testaments and Testament Oath Texts, 1671–1850), which is freely available in electronic form (http://ezb.ijs.si/fedora/get/ezmono:oporoke/VIEW/), will be attractive not only to the local population mentioned in the documents published, but also for wider study of the use of Slovenian in official texts in schools and universities. Other editions enrich and add to the body of Slovenian literary tradition, each in its own way. In terms of the importance of this project’s findings for Slovenia, special mention should be made of the critical edition of the Kapla Passion (today Bad Eisenkappel/Železna Kapla). The edition proves that in the eighteenth century, and most likely already in the seventeenth century, an extensive play in Slovenian was being performed in Bad Eisenkappel from the morning of Holy Thursday until Easter Monday as the central event surrounding the Easter festivities in the entire parish of Bad Eisenkappel and its appertaining hamlets. Slovenian government authorities should take these facts into account whenever they discuss the rights of the Slovenian minority in Austria with Austrian government representatives, and use it as a powerful argument indicating a long Slovenian linguistic, literary, and playwriting tradition in Austrian Carinthia. Ultimately, the Slovenian government should show interest in staging the Kapla Passion because it is an eminent Baroque play that is similar to the Škofja Loka Passion in many ways (and even surpasses it in certain aspects). Just like the Škofja Loka Passion, with proper organization of the theater performance and the support of the local community, the Kapla Passion could become a well-known event that would attract large audiences from near and far through its archaic and, in many ways, still medieval, but authentic and suggestive textual rendition of the Easter mystery. Such an event could strongly unite Slovenians north and south of the Karawank Mountains, strengthen cross-border cooperation, and, first and foremost, connect the ethnic Slovenians in Austrian Carinthia with their cultural center in Slovenia.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2013,
2014,
2015,
final report
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2013,
2014,
2015,
final report
