This collective book is a major Slovenian outcome of the project “National Poets and Cultural Saints of Europe: Commemorative Cults, Canonization, and Cultural Memory”. The introduction by the editor and project leader Marijan Dović is followed by twenty chapters, written either by the eleven members of the research team (seven of them from the ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies and three from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) or by nine specialists invited for the selected topics the volume was planned to address. The book is divided into four parts: the first part mainly addresses theoretical and historical dimensions of the concepts introduced (e.g., canonization, cultural saints, and hagiography in five chapters), and the other three focus in greater detail on individual cases in the European context (four chapters), Yugoslav context (three chapters), and finally Slovenian context (eight chapters). Below, 12 chapters of this monograph are listed that were written by the project team members: MARIJAN DOVIĆ: O kulturnih svetnikih in kanonizaciji: uvod MARIJAN DOVIĆ: Kanonizacija kulturnih svetnikov: analitični model JERNEJ HABJAN: Od kulture svetnikov do svetnikov kulture: svetnik in literat med življenjem in delom JOLA ŠKULJ: Vloga nacionalnega, kozmopolitizem in kanonizacija IRENA SAMIDE: Evropski kulturni svetnik Friedrich Schiller in njegova kanonizacija na Slovenskem BOJAN BASKAR: Njegoš med dvema svetništvoma: slavljenje nacionalnega pesnika in vladarja ob dvestoti obletnici njegovega rojstva MARKO JUVAN: Svetovljenje nacionalnega pesnika in asimetrije prevajanja: Prešernov primer ALENKA KORON: Hagiografski diskurz v zgodnjih biografijah o Prešernu ANDRAŽ JEŽ: Zakaj Stanko Vraz ni kulturni svetnik? MONIKA DEŽELAK TROJAR: Kanonizacija Antona Martina Slomška v verskem in kulturnem kontekstu LUKA VIDMAR: Gaudí in Plečnik: od kulturne kanonizacije do cerkvene beatifikacije URŠKA PERENIČ: Toponomastika uličnih imen, nacionalna identiteta in pripadanje: literarne ulice v ožjem središču Ljubljane
COBISS.SI-ID: 286122496
English book, written by two authors. In 'National poets, cultural saints' Marijan Dović (Slovenia) and Jón Karl Helgason (Iceland) explore the ways in which certain artist, writers, and poets in Europe have become major figures of cultural memory, emulating the symbolic role formerly played by state rulers and religious saints. The authors develop the concept of cultural sainthood in the context of nationalism as a form of invisible religion, identify major shifts in canonization practices from the antiquity to the nationally-motivated commemoration of the 19th century, and explore the afterlives of two national poets, Slovenia's France Prešeren and Iceland's Jónas Hallgrímsson. The book presents a useful analytical model of canonization for further studies on cultural sainthood and opens up fruitful perspectives for the understanding of national movements.
COBISS.SI-ID: 34765917
The book by the project leader Marijan Dović in Slovenian. "Prešeren after Prešeren" is not merely another contribution to the long series of volumes on the life and work of the renowned Slovenian poet France Prešeren (1800–1849) that have been produced in the deep-rooted tradition of Prešeren studies (or “Prešernology”) during the last century and a half. Namely, this is the first book that scrutinizes Prešeren’s “afterlife” within Slovenian culture, a study that reads not only literary texts, but also rituals and memorials. Rather than addressing the poet alone, it is concerned with his interpreters, canonizers, and mythographers. More specifically, the research focuses on the mechanisms of the canonization that after Prešeren’s death brilliantly transformed the figure of this Romantic poet into the ultimate emblem of (emerging) Slovenian nationality: a national poet and cultural saint. The theoretical (and terminological) innovations that the author introduces and defends in this book make it inherently impossible to deal exclusively with Prešeren. Moreover, a thoroughly comparative approach is strongly demanded by the fact that many of the treatments of the poet’s legacy are locked into a national horizon and therefore inclined to favor an apparent uniqueness, a “syndromic” nature of the Slovenian case. Therefore, the book has two parts: it first deals with the broader theoretical and historical contexts of veneration of cultural saints in Europe, and then offers a nuanced and complex picture of Prešeren’s canonization in Slovenian culture.
COBISS.SI-ID: 290117376
The introductory article of the project leader Marijan Dović to the thematic issue (in English) of the established journal Arcadia. (The issue itself was also edited by the project leader.) In his article, Dović proposes to continue the comparative examination of national poets (such as Adam Mickiewicz, Robert Burns, Sándor Petőfi, Hristo Botev, Mihai Eminescu, Karel H. Mácha, France Prešeren, Taras Ševčenko, Maironis, and Jónas Hallgrímsson) that already exposed the power of the institution of a national poet. Virgil Nemoianu, John Neubauer, and other pioneer researchers have already revealed why (and partly also, how) national poets have contributed so massively to the formation of many individual literary cultures in Europe. However, several questions that can be raised at a comparative level still remain unresolved. Some preliminary answers to the questions concerning the general pattern of national(ist) features in the “works and deeds” of national poets are given in the article.
COBISS.SI-ID: 41838125
An article of the project team member Marko Juvan in the thematic issue "National Poets and Romantic (Be)Longing" of the established journal Arcadia. The issue itself was edited by the project leader Marijan Dović. In his article, Juvan explores the figures of “national poets” that were invented to represent their respective nations to the gaze of the Other, symbolized by the emerging world literature and empowered through the inter-state system dominated by the core countries. While several national poets involved in national movements showed a “vernacular” tendency, Schiller and Goethe represented the more “cosmopolitan” model of a national classic. Such “affiliation” to the universal aesthetic canon is also characteristic of the politics of Slovenian romantic movement and its poet, France Prešeren.
COBISS.SI-ID: 41864493