Bilingual literary practice of the Carinthian Slovenes

In the course of the last twenty-five years, the conditions of reception for literature by Carinthian Slovenes has changed in the German-speaking as well as in the Slovene-speaking world. The international echo in response to Maja Haderlaps novel The Angel of Oblivion (2011) as well as the success of Slovene-language writer Florjan Lipuš provide evidence for that change. By the same token, Peter Handkes partially bilingual piece Still Storm which enjoyed its premiere at the Salzburg Festival (2011) as well as shortly thereafter at the Slovene National Theatre in Ljubljana (2013) demonstrates that even specific topics, subjects, and models of literature by Carinthian Slovenes have moved from the periphery to central, high-profile positions. Underlying that shift is an intercultural practice that reaches beyond the scope of Slovene literature in Carinthia and leads to new interactions. The objective of the proposed project is to document systematically the current literary practice of bilingual authors from Carinthia und the sphere of interaction in which they are active. Based on empirical data, the position occupied by the literature of a minority, which no longer draws its identity from the unique character or the regional boundedness of its carriers, should be ascertained. The question to be investigated is whether observable, trans-regional, and transnational interactions are economically determined or whether they are indicative of a structural change from which Slovene literature in Carinthia ultimately benefits. As such, the extent to which those interactions and the transition to literary bilingualism observably impact Slovene literary production and the repertoires of the minority itself is also to be deduced within the framework of this project.

The trends of literature by Carinthians Slovene authors today lean to a significant extent towards German speaking literary centres. As a result, language or ethnicity no longer provide valid criteria for summarizing their literature as a literature of a relatively homogenous minority. The core objective of the research was to capture and describe an open bilingual literary field by including texts of Carinthian Slovenes as well as authors of other origins who have a receptive, participative, or even production relationship to the Carinthian Slovenes and its literary production. During the project, an extensive database was created that allows studying the specific developments and transformations within the literary practice of the Carinthian Slovenes after the discontinuation of the literary journal mladje in 1991 and captures the supra-regional (transnational, virtual) sphere of interaction. The database brings together for the first time a wide variety of information on texts, authors and institutions within the German- and the Slovene speaking sphere, who are primarily not linked to the Slovene minority in Carinthia. The database encompasses their recourse on motifs, genres of literature and cultural memory of the Carinthian Slovenes as well as their institutional relations that aide in shaping the sphere of interaction and literary sphere in which the literature of the Carinthian Slovenes is embedded in today. Likewise, for the first time, forms of (inter-)medial related literary practice that use electronic or digital distribution channels were included, which broaden and virtualize this sphere of interaction. The analysis of the bilingual literary field provides tools for the further exploration of inter- and transcultural literary interactions and widens the methodological foundation for research on literary multilingualism in general.