The scientific monograph summarizes all the results of the project. It analyses the social role of literature in all periods of Slovenian literary history, describes in detail the political significance of literary culture in the period 1945–1990, presents in detail Slovenian literary production after 1990, especially in relation to the social role of literature. It notes that since 1990, the literary culture has been marginalized. Consequently, its political impact is not comparable to that of 1945 and 1990. The author concludes that in the present circumstances, the most important social role of literature must be seen in its ethical dimension.
COBISS.SI-ID: 41378307
In its goal to grasp the subject in the poem, the book The Lyric Subject enables two kinds of readings: as an attempt to reconceptualise the lyrical subject as the basic notion of the theory of the lyric, on the one hand, and, on the other, as a discussion of some of the key chapters of literary theory as such as well as of other theories that are relevant for a reconstruction of the theory of the lyric. As such, the book marks the beginning of an endeavour to develop a novel theory of the lyric. In the analytical part, the monograph deals with examples from the history of world poetry, focusing also on the Slovenian poetic production in the past three decades.
COBISS.SI-ID: 298302464
The article compares two dramas by Dušan Jovanović and Simona Semenič. The first is Military Secret (1983) and the second nineteeneighty-one (2013), both describing the last decade of socialist Yugoslavia. What strikes us as odd is the fact that the image of socialist society in both texts differs to quite an extent. Jovanović describes it as a radical dystopia in the form of the drama of the absurd, and Semenič as a utopian or nostalgic image of an epoch when ethics was still present in human relations. However, the analysis shows that Semenič is using this image of socialism to emphasize the dystopia of the modern neoliberalism of contemporary Slovenia. Furthermore, she uses an innovative form of montage with dream-like flash-forwards into the future, to provoke the reader's/viewer's emotions and her intellectual response. She unsettles reception in the manner of post-dramatic theatre as understood by Hans Thies Lehmann in order to build her social criticism of contemporary human condition. Jovanović, on the other hand, camouflages his social critique in the form of the theatre of the absurd. He sets it in a zoolinguistic institute where animals enact some of the absurd patterns of self-government (e.g. an election process with only one candidate, constant search for compromise, an impossible economy). Military Secret was a result of the special position of Slovenian theatre in the 1980s when theatre was understood as a social forum, a place where dissident ideas could be...
COBISS.SI-ID: 69703266
Boris A. Novak's Cassandra was created after the author's experience of the Balkan wars, so it is not surprising that it has a socio-critical perspective. Beyond the parallels between the author's biography and his attitude to war, the emergence of war trauma and its resolution in a post-socialist mental context is highlighted. The solution proves interesting, on the one hand because of its unexpectedness and exceptionality, and on the other hand with its focus on the subjective aspect of reconciliation. In this paper, based on the theoretical underpinnings of cognitive literary science, in particular the distinction between cognitive and emotional empathy, I analyze the circumstances, cognitive mechanisms and social function of Cassandra's decision to forgive Agamemnon. From an evolutionary point of view, it has at first an irritating effect, but from a personal point of view it enables individual self-fulfillment through love. The fundamental dilemma of Novak's drama is the following: is it possible, at the level of cognitive analysis, to justify either individual or collective overcoming of trauma in Cassandra's way?
COBISS.SI-ID: 28935171
“The Cannibals” of the Slovenian poet and playwright Gregor Strniša (1930-1987) have so far been staged on Slovenian stage five times, in 1977, 1987, 1995, 2002 and 2017. The drama was directed three times (1977, 1987 and 2002) by Mile Korun, once by Aleš Novak (1995) and Ivica Buljan (2017). Drawing on preliminary analyses of the social role of Slovenian drama in the second half of the 20th century (Borovnik, Troha, Poniž, Kermauner, Orel), the article examines the hypothesis that the year 1991 represents a fundamental change in the social role of Slovenian drama. At the same time, through the analysis of responses, it examines the assumption that the 1980s are the key to understanding Slovenian post-independence literature. The analysis of the reception of “The Cannibals” partly confirms both hypotheses, while also specifying the specific aspects of the social role of the drama genre and Strniša’s poetics, which influence the social echo of Strniša’s Cannibals.
COBISS.SI-ID: 69002338