Slavica Tergestina 26 (2021/I)

Slavica tergestina volumes usually focus on a particular theme or concept. Most of the articles published so far deal with the cultural realm of the Slavic world from the perspective of modern semiotic and cultural methodological approaches, but the journal remains open to other approaches and methodologies. The theme of the upcoming volume along with detailed descriptions of the submission deadlines and the peer review process can be found on our website at www.slavicater.org. All published articles are also available online, both on the journal website and in the University of Trieste web publication system at www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/handle/10077/2204.

This article examines documentary materials of the Dramatic Society in Ljubljana from the period between 1891/92 and 1903/04 that are held in the Archives of the Republic of Slovenia. The approach is informed by Ginzburg’s micro-historical method, which suggests reading documents “against the grain” and underlines the importance of materials’ differing provenance. Two types of documents are included in the censorship materials, which were created by individuals in subordinate roles and by those in government structures. One type is requests from the Dramatic Society to stage plays in Slovenian, and the other is grants of permission for productions from the Provincial Presidency of Carniola, which was in charge of theater censorship. An analysis reveals that at the beginning of the twentieth century the censorship apparatus’s power had not yet waned, but in fact had increased, and the time of depoliticized censorship had not yet arrived.

This article examines how Slovenian writers, dramatists, journalists, and publishers dealt with the post-1848 censorship in the Habsburg Monarchy. In contrast to the preventive censor-ship characteristic of the pre-March period, the retroactive (post-publication) censorship that prevailed after the suppressed 1848 revolution used a different modus operandi: relying on a network of prosecutors and courts, it controlled print in retrospect, often seizing print runs, launching lawsuits against the press, and imposing heavy fines. This analysis focuses on the cases of the Carinthan publisher Andrej Einspieler, the prosecution of nationalist literati in Ljubljana (Fran Levstik, Miroslav Vilhar, Jakob Alešovec, and Janez Trdina), the imprisonment of authors and publishers, and, finally, the notable case of Ivan Cankar.

Slovenian literary history discussed Austrian censorship in Carniola during the Pre-March Era mainly through the conflict between the Romantic poet Prešeren and backward secular and church authorities. This article changes the perspective by examining the paradox of censor as an instrument of imperial thought control and a trained expert resembling the literary critic. In the period of Metternich’s absolutist policing, censorship was inadvertently individualized. How censors relied on their aesthetic judgement, prestige, and strategies is shown by the treat-ment of the almanac Krajnska čbelica by Kopitar and Čop in the 1830s. During the “Slovenian alphabet war,” Kopitar’s Herderianism collided with the Romantic cosmopolitanism of Prešeren and Čop, who advocated the impor-tance of aesthetic autonomy for the national movement.

Based on copies that have been preserved in the National and University Library, archival documents, early library inventories and catalogues, and accession logs, this article examines the presence of works by prominent French, English, and American philosophers and political philosophers in the Ljubljana lyceum library’s collection in the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. It also presents sources that testify to the influence of imperial censorship policies and legislation on the acquisition, recording, and lending of banned literature in the library until 1848, and provides information on individuals and institutions that kept works by banned authors in their personal collections before they became part of the Ljubljana lyceum library.