SLOVENSKA PROSTORNA KNJIŽEVNA ZNANOST I KNJIŽEVNA INTERPRETACIJA

• Published in: Umjetnost riječi no. 3-4; pp. 301 - 318
• Main Author: Perenič, Urška
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Croatian
• Published: Croatian Philological Association 2020; Hrvatsko filološko društvo
• Subjects: Geography, Regional studies; Recent History (1900 till today); Slovenian Literature; Sociolinguistics; Theory of Literature; spatial data; spatial literary studies; postmodern humanities; empirical literary studies (ELW); literary geography; spatial turn; biographies of writers; quantitative analysis; thematic literary map
• ISSN: 0503-1583

The paper examines how to interpret literature from the viewpoint of modern spatially oriented literary studies, more precisely, of its Slovenian academic version, which has established in the last decade. It draws on the tradition of literary geography from the beginning of the 20th century and updates it theoretically and methodologically with the concepts of postmodern spatial humanities. It is productively connected with the empirical studies of literature (ELW), which have a longer tradition in Slovenia, especially through the conception of literature as a social system. Slovenian spatially oriented literary studies are based on a particular hypothesis about mutual influences between geospace, understood as a mesh of physical-natural and social conditions, and literature, understood as a literary communication. Slovenian literature is interpreted primarily through space. In literary studies, various types of spatial data come to the fore, which are, on the one hand, mainly relate to biographies of writers and the infrastructure of media and institutions, and, on the other, to literary texts that refer to geospace. Thematic literary maps – created using geographic information system technology (GIS) – are used to present, analyse and interpret the relations between geospace and the “life paths” of the most prominent Slovenian writers.