Slovene literature

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Slovene literature" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Part of a series on the
Culture of Slovenia
History Timeline Noricum / Pannonia Slavic settlement of the Eastern Alps Samo's Realm Carantania March of Carniola Windic March Illyrian Provinces Kingdom of Illyria Duchy of Carniola Drava Banovina Socialist Republic
People
Languages
Cuisine
Festivals Public holidays
Religion
Art Photography Painters Photographers Sculptors
Literature Writers Poets
Music and performing arts Theatre Actors Musicians Composers
Media Radio Television Cinema Radio stations
Sport
Monuments World Heritage Sites
Symbols Flag Coat of arms National anthem
Slovenia portal
v t e

Slovene literature is the literature written in Slovene. It spans across all literary genres with historically the Slovene historical fiction as the most widespread Slovene fiction genre. The Romantic 19th-century epic poetry written by the leading name of the Slovene literary canon, France Prešeren, inspired virtually all subsequent Slovene literature.

Literature played an important role in the development and preservation of Slovene identity because the Slovene nation did not have its own state until 1991 after the Republic of Slovenia emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia.^[1] Poetry, narrative prose, drama, essay, and criticism kept the Slovene language and culture alive, allowing—in the words of Anton Slodnjak—the Slovenes to become a real nation, particularly in the absence of "masculine" attributes such as political power and authority.^[1]

There are accounts that cite the existence of an oral literary tradition that preceded the Slovene written literature.^[4] This was mostly composed of folk songs and also prose, which included tales of myths, fairy tales, and narrations.^[5]

The earliest documents written in Old Slovene are the Freising manuscripts (Brižinski spomeniki), dated between 972 and 1022, found in 1803 in Freising, Germany. This book was written for the purpose of spreading Christianity to the Alpine Slavs and contained terms concerned with the institutions of authority such as oblast (authority), gospod (lord), and rota (oath).^[6]

The first printed books in Slovene were Catechismus and Abecedarium, written by the Protestant reformer Primož Trubar in 1550 and printed in Schwäbisch Hall.^[7] Based on the work by Trubar, who from 1555 until 1577 translated into Slovene and published the entire New Testament, Jurij Dalmatin translated the entire Bible into Slovene from c. 1569 until 1578 and published it in 1583. In the second half of the 16th century, Slovene became known to other European languages with the multilingual dictionary, compiled by Hieronymus Megiser. Since then each new generation of Slovene writers has contributed to the growing corpus of texts in Slovene. Particularly, Adam Bohorič's Arcticae horulae, the first Slovene grammar, and Sebastjan Krelj's Postilla Slovenska, became the bases of the development of Slovene literature.^[5]

This period encompasses 1899–1918.

Intimism (Slovene: intimizem) was a poetic movement, the main themes of which were love, disappointment and suffering and the projection of poet's inner feelings onto nature.^[8] Its beginner is Ivan Minatti, who was followed by Lojze Krakar. The climax of Intimism was achieved in 1953 with a collection of poetry titled Poems of the Four (Pesmi štirih), written by Janez Menart, Ciril Zlobec, Kajetan Kovič and Tone Pavček.^[9] An often neglected female counterpart to the four was Ada Škerl, whose subjective and pessimistic poetic sentiment was contrary to the post-war revolutionary demands in the People's Republic of Slovenia.^[10]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Slovene-language literature.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (April 2009) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the French article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,613 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at [[:fr:Littérature slovène]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Littérature slovène}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.