Slovenian literature

The relationship between developments in a “real” society and the portrayal of this society in literature can be studied by analyzing the linguistic picture of the world using the componential analysis method. The concept of the linguistic picture of the world has been developed by various interdisciplinary directions in Europe and the US, relying on the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who conceived of language as a specific manifestation of culture. The linguistic picture of the world is an interpretation, conceptualization, and presentation of the world conveyed through language. A componential analysis was conducted to compare the semantic components of the concept of early-nineteenth-century society and the components of the same concept in a literary work of the Slovenian Biedermeier (i.e., the first original Slovenian narrative). The results of this analysis showed differences in the concept’s content that can be identified as criticism of the real society and an alternative reading option.

This article typologizes visual poetry of the Slovenian neo-avant-garde. The Slovenian neo-avant-garde, which flourished roughly from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, was closely connected to student movements on the one hand, and to new theoretical and philosophical currents on the other. Young authors thus tested the boundaries of literary discourse and experimented with new artistic practices, such as happenings, performance, multimedia projects, land art, and so on. In so doing, they drew heavily upon the artistic and literary practices of the historical avant-garde, which again gained popularity at that time as well. Although the intertwining of the verbal and the visual in literature in the 1960s was not new, it reached new dimensions with the development of conceptualism.