Studies in Literary History, Literary Theory and Methodology

Based on critical reflection on methods used in contemporary literary studies, the research program deals with the theory and history of literary discourse. It analyzes the general features of literary discourse, its historical development, geospatial variants, forms, styles, genres, and relationships with other signifying practices (i.e., other arts, economics, religion, politics, etc.), proceeding from semiotics, systems approaches, cognitivism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and post-hermeneutics. As historical elements of discursive circulations and literary systems, texts are connected with various linguistic, cognitive, media, institutional, and sociocultural contexts.

The studies of the history of Slovenian literature from the Middle Ages to the present rely on preparing repositories of sources and their scholarly critical editions in book or digitized form. The development of Slovenian literature is interpreted in the light of international cultural-artistic, political, and socioeconomic processes at the intersection of the Mediterranean with central and southeast Europe. Medieval, Reformation, Baroque, and Enlightenment literature in Slovenia is examined in terms of its language, functional, genre, and social diversity, and its embeddedness in the geographical space and various lifestyles. The program also explores the impact of European cultural nationalism on Slovenian literature during the nineteenth century, and the role of literary mediation, canonization, and cultural memory. The study of the relationships between Slovenian literature and world systems includes the complex of “belatedness” and peripherality (using the case of novels), the penetration of Slovenian classic writers across the borders of their home literary system, the formation of a Slovenianized world literature canon (in literature, publishing, the school system, and literary studies), and the specific role of innovative Slovenian literature from the Moderne around 1900 to the 1960s (modernism and the avant-garde as social criticism and engagement).

The research program makes possible long-term, complex, coordinated, and interdisciplinary teamwork and international cooperation. The research findings will be regularly conveyed to the Slovenian and international professional community and the general public. They will be included in undergraduate and graduate programs, research volumes and collections of scholarly articles, scholarly critical editions of Slovenian literature (in print and electronic form), conferences, public talks, and the institute’s website.