Webpage of the research project "Towards a History of Comparative Literature in a Global Perspective: Matija Murko and his International Collaborators"
We are pleased to announce that our colleague Miloš Zelenka, professor of Czech literature at the University of South Bohemia, has published his report on the international conference “The History of Comparative Literature in Central Europe” held in Ljubljana last September. The article, entitled Matija Murko and the History of Comparative Literature Studies in Central Europe, has been published in the journal Slavica litteraria (vol. 27, iss. 1, 2024).
You can read the full article (in Czech) at the link below:
The aim of our conference is to bring new insights and knowledge of a comparative literature in Central Europe which remains largely unexplored and therefore underrepresented in academic debates in the discipline. We acknowledge that Central Europe was historically shaped into a region of its own by various economic, political, and ideological structures. While we intentionally left the geographic and cultural concept of the area undefined, it is unquestionable that its regional identity was shaped both from within and from the outside. From within, the Central European region always negotiated between its ethnically, linguistically, and culturally heterogeneous communities. This has produced various internal centers and relegated other areas to the position of the periphery. From the outside, Central Europe had to define its position in relation to other global players and transnational associations. These political and cultural circumstances played a crucial role in all areas of intellectual production, including academic research. Comparative literature was no exception and the discipline was often tasked with expanding or subverting established discourses. For instance, Central European comparatists had to acknowledge the rich history of multicultural and multilinguistic literary traditions in the area while at the same time establishing themselves in relation to other academic centers such as the French and the American schools of comparative literature.
Despite its relevance for understanding Central European comparative literature, disciplinary self-perceptions and their relation to the internal and external exchange of knowledge have thus far remained unexplored. Over the next three days we thus explore the rich and complex history of comparative literature in Central Europe, focusing on the key scholars, schools, topics, and methods that have shaped the field. We consider which influential figures and approaches have been historically overlooked, and why Central European comparative literature has remained under-represented in broader academic debates on the history of the discipline. Our exploration also extends to the academic connections between Central European comparative literature and literary scholarship in other regions such as Southeast Europe, France, Russia, and America. We also delve into the relationships between central and (semi-)peripheral regions within Central European comparative literature, analyzing the factors that have led to the emergence of asymmetries within Central European academia and the inequalities in intellectual exchanges between different regions. We also explore how Central Europe’s multilinguistic literary traditions have been reflected in the field of comparative literature.
Finally, three sections are devoted to an important forerunner of comparative literature, a Slavic philologist Matija Murko who offers a paradigmatic case study for addressing many of the questions raised above. Murko has built a long and successful academic career and has had an immense influence on the development of literary studies in Central Europe and elsewhere. After finishing his studies in Slavic philology at the University of Vienna, he travelled to Russia, became a professor in Graz and Leipzig, and later moved to Prague where he co-founded and headed the Slavonic Studies Institute at a time when the influential “Prague Linguistic Circle” was flourishing there. Both in his academic life and in his research, he has been moving between the academic centres and semi-peripheries of Central Europe, breaking academic barriers (for instance, with his comparative Slavic literary studies) and influencing younger scholars (such as Frank Wollman, Milman Parry or Roman Jakobson). His work was appreciated both inside and far beyond Central Europe, so much so that his research on South Slavic oral literature is still considered referential today. Murko’s scholarship thus offers an excellent opportunity to explore topics, questions, methods, international collaborations, and the politics of knowledge prevalent in the history of Central European comparative literature.
Blaž Zabel, colloquium lead
Programme:
Thursday, 5 September
Cankarjev dom, Alma Karlin Hall
9.00: Registration
9.30: Opening speeches
10.00: First panel: Tone Smolej (chair)
Antoni Martí Monterde: Budapest, capitale de la littérature comparée. Les autres géographies du comparatisme européen: Janos Hankiss
Norbert Bachleitner: Prolegomena for the (short) History of Comparative Literature in Austria
Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek: The Discipline of Comparative Literature in Hungarian Scholarship
11.30 Coffee break
12.00: Second panel: Blaž Gselman (chair)
Kaitlyn Sorenson: ‘The Tragedy of Central Europe,’ Forty Years On
Vladimir Biti: Un/worlding Literature: Dubravka Ugrešić as a Post-Multinational Writer
Suman Gupta: Small Philologies and Literary Machine Translation
13.30: Lunch
15.00: Third panel: Blaž Zabel (chair)
Róbert Gáfrik: History and Perspectives of Comparative Literary Studies in Slovakia
PawełMarcinkiewicz: Comparative Literary Studies in Poland: A Historical and Methodological Overview
Zoltán Varga, Péter Hajdu: Reconnected into the World: the Early Years of the Hungarian Comparative Literature Association in the AILC/ICLA
16.30 Coffee break
17.00: Fourth panel: Kaitlyn Sorenson (chair)
Daniel Pietrek: Comparative Literary Studies at Work: Horst Bienek and his American Identity
Blaž Zabel: The Birth of Literary Localization: Johann Gottfried Herder as a Comparatist
20.00: Conference dinner
Friday, 6 September
Cankarjev dom, Alma Karlin Hall/Center Rog, University Room
Cankarjev dom, Alma Karlin Hall
10.00: Murko panel I: Alen Albin Širca (chair)
Miloš Zelenka: Matija Murko in strukturalna estetika
Alenka Jensterle Doležal: Premislek o pozitivističnih literarnih zgodovinarjih: Matija Murko in Jan Máchal
Tone Smolej: Matija Murko in nefrancoski začetki slovenske primerjalne književnosti v 19. stoletju
11.30 Coffee break
12.00: Murko panel II: Tone Smolej (chair)
Varja Balžalorsky Antić: Od primerjalnega jezikoslovja do primerjalne književnosti: Matija Murko in Antoine Meillet v luči raziskav ustnega pesništva
Irena Samide: Matija Murko kot germanist
Alen Albin Širca: Matija Murko in hrvaška renesančna literatura
Center Rog, University Room
13.30: Lunch
15.00: Murko panel III: Blaž Zabel (chair)
Sylva Fischerová: Matija Murko’s Research on the South Slavic Epic Tradition and Czechoslovakian Slavistics
Jasmina Talam: Voices from the Past: Musical Tradition of Bosnia and Herzegovina through the Research of Matija Murko
Blaž Gselman: The Correspondents of Matija Murko: Outlining a Central European Topos
16.30: Coffee break
17.00: Fifth panel: Alexandre Burin (chair)
Jernej Habjan: History of World Literature in Central Europe
Max Behmer: German Contributions to 1930s Comparative Literature in the Context of the Journal ‘Helicon’
Saturday, 7 September
Center Rog, University Room
10.00: Sixth panel: Blaž Zabel (chair)
Andrei Terian: Comparatism Beyond Comparative Literature: Lessons from Southeastern Europe
Ştefan Baghiu: The Tragedy of Non-Central Europe: Interimperiality and World Literature in the European Southeast
Snejana Ung: Comparative Literature in Romania: Talking about a Periphery at the Periphery
11.30: Coffee break
12.00: Seventh panel: Blaž Gselman (chair)
Alexandre Burin: Beyond Structure: Barthes via Kristeva
Milena Mileva Blažić: Comparative Children’s Literature
In its Manuscript collection, The National and University Library (NUL) in Ljubljana holds the largest part of the philologist Matija Murko’s legacy. The material is contained in two large units, “Correspondence” (catalogue number MS1119) and “Legacy” (catalogue number MS1392). The former, as its name suggests, consists of correspondence received by Murko and comprises 56 folders, or over 9,000 letters from more than 1,700 correspondents, both individuals and institutions. The second collection is even more extensive, comprising, in eleven sections, not only Murko’s works, notes, and other materials (which constitute the bulk of the contents of this unit), but also some of his letters, smaller correspondence, and foreign correspondence, as well as personal documents and other paraphernalia. This unit comprises more than 100 folders.
In this article, we would like to introduce the correspondence briefly. That unusual part of a scholar’s legacy steers away from the strict discursive forms required in scientific practice. Written in a first-person narrative, it differentiates significantly from the usual research work, where there is supposed to be no room for subjective experience. The letters as a whole form a very heterogeneous body of writing; family correspondence, that is, the most intimate correspondence, for example, is at least as substantial as the correspondence of his academic colleagues. Moreover, the latter is again not a homogeneous unit, since Murko’s research interests ranged from the more classically linguistic, and philological, literary historical to ethnographic and folkloristic ones. They are even less similar linguistically, with letters written (at least) in Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, German, Czech, Russian, French, and English. It is not uncommon for the same correspondent to have written a letter in one language and later another letter in another language, usually in a relationship between the minor language and the major language, German, in the imperial lands. The reasons for this are probably mainly to be found in imperial censorship.
A letter sent to Matija Murko by literary historian Ivan Prijatelj. (Source: Manuscript collection, Catalogue No.: MS1119, NUL, Ljubljana.)
Murko corresponded with individuals and institutions from various local and regional milieus. While he was institutionally anchored in the Central European academic milieu throughout his life, Murko was also in touch with university professors, school teachers, magazine editors, etc. from Russia, the whole of Yugoslavia, Northern Europe, and elsewhere. A mapping of the letters would probably reveal Murko’s strong ties with political and academic centres in German-speaking countries, as well as his strong involvement in intellectual exchanges with the Southern and Eastern (semi-)peripheries of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy, or with the Slavic countries that emerged thereof.
It is perhaps not surprising that the most extensive single correspondence is, composed of 346 letters, the one with his brother Miha Murko. However, here we are more interested in his academic colleagues with whom he shared research interests. Thus, among Murko’s correspondents, we find a number of interesting scholars who have historically helped shape the humanistic landscape, both in what is present-day Slovenia and across Europe. Among the more extensive correspondence is that of the Slavist Vatroslav Jagić, the successor of Fran Miklošič at the helm of the Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna. An important contribution to understanding the pre-history of Slovenian comparative literature is to be found in the correspondences of some literary historians, in particular Ivan Prijatelj and France Kidrič. The correspondence with the literary historians Fran Ilešič and Fran Levec, important figures associated with the Slovene Society (Slovenska matica), is also worth mentioning. As many as 155 letters were sent to Murko by the Indo-European philologist Rudolf Meringer, a professor at the University of Graz from 1899 to 1930 (Murko was his colleague there from 1902 to 1917), who became famous for his pioneering research into speech disorders. His famous and controversial contemporary Sigmund Freud based his own psychoanalytic research on speech disorders or »slips« on Meringer’s research. Even a few more letters, 164, were written to Murko by the Slavic philologist Vatroslav Oblak, whose research interest was rooted in South Slavic dialects. Oblak, whom Murko held in high esteem, died at the age of only thirty-one, shortly before his appointment as associate professor of Slavonic philology at the University of Graz. In the years between the First World War and its immediate aftermath, Murko received several letters from his student in Graz, the Russian linguist and philologist Nikolai Preobrazhensky, an interesting figure in the academic milieu in Slovenia. In the wake of the First World War, he tried to obtain a professorship at the newly founded University of Ljubljana but was rejected. Nevertheless, from 1922 onwards, he was a lecturer in Russian there, and later also lectured on modern Russian literature. The correspondence of the Croatian Slavist, classical philologist, and literary historian Milivoj Šrepel is also extensive. The twelve letters sent to Murko by the philologist, literary historian, and translator Camilla Lucerna are also noteworthy, as she was one of the few women scholars (especially if one does not take into account his kinship) with whom he corresponded. In addition to the individuals with a larger number of letters, there are quite a few correspondents in Murko’s correspondence, represented only by a letter or two, who deserve special attention. Murko often corresponded with linguists, historians, and philologists from the entire South Slavic region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In these letters, we find interesting reports on the state of oral epic in various local environments. Murko was involved in the project ‘Das Volkslied in Österreich’ [Folk Song in Austria] initiated by the Austrian government, which began in 1901 but remained unfinished (and largely unexplored) after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is worth noting that Murko’s correspondence contains thirty letters from the linguist, Slavist, and collector of Slovenian folk songs Karel Štrekelj, who was the head of the Slovenian working committee of the above-mentioned project (after Štrekelj’s death Murko succeeded him in this position).
The NUL catalogue of the manuscript unit “Correspondence” is deficient in a few places, as it does not contain the names of all the correspondents who actually appear in the folders. Thus, in the catalouge we do not find Anton Funtek, the editor of the Ljubljanski zvon magazine, who, with eighteen letters, is not the most modestly represented of Murko’s correspondents. In one place, however, there is a major omission. Thirty-two correspondents are missing from the list, between the names Viktor Halcker and Friedrich Heide (all of them in the fifteenth folder).[1]
The entire archival unit “Correspondence” (MS1119 ) has been digitised as part of the research project “Matija Murko and his international collaborators” and will soon be freely available to the interested public on the Digital Library of Slovenia (dLib) portal. This step is necessary if we do not want archives – paradoxically – to remain the places where both the preservation of historically accumulated knowledge and the organisation of its oblivion are condensed, as archived materials often live an isolated life, alienated even from the research community.
[1] Missing names include Karl Hadaczek (1 letter), Jovan Hadži (2 letters), Risto Hadži-Ristić (2 letters), Frieda Hager (1 letter), A. Halban (1 letter), Albert Halbe-Wagner (2 letters), Jakob and Anna Hameršak (2 letters), Karel Hameršak (1 letter), Martin Hameršak (3 letters), Gustav Hanausek (8 letters), Handelshochschule Munich (14 letters), E. Hanisch (2 letters), Erwin Hanslik (12 letters), Josef Hanus (2 letters), Johann Haring (2 letters), Wilhelm Hartel (2 letters), Count Harrach (5 letters), Otto Harrassowitz (4 letters), F. Hartmann (1 letter), Fritz Hartmann (1 letter), Lude Meritz Hartmann (2 letters), Richard Hartmann (3 letters), Karl Hassack (10 letters), Berthold Hatschek (1 letter), Adolf Hauffen (2 letters), Edmund Hauler (7 letters), Fr. Hauptmann (6 letters), Johann Sebastian Hausmann (1 letter), Miecislav Havel (1 letter), Rudolf Heberdey (3 letters), Max Hecker (1 letter), Franz Heger (8 letters).
Slovenian Comparative Literature Association, in collaboration with the University of Ljubljana and the research group “Towards a History of Comparative Literature in a Global Perspective: Matija Murko and his International Collaborators (J6-4620),” welcomes submission for an international conference entitled The History of Comparative Literature in Central Europe. The conference will be held during the Vilenica literary festival in Ljubljana, Slovenia, between 5 and 7 September 2024.
A small amount of funding is available to help cover travel expenses and accommodation.
***
Comparative literature has a rich and long history in which Central Europe has always played an important role. From Johann Gottfried Herder’s explorations of folk poetry to Hugó Meltzl’s journal Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, Central European comparatists have paved the path for the newly emerging discipline. Considering how influential comparative literary studies were in the socio-political region known as Mitteleuropa, it is surprising that its history remains a largely unexplored topic and therefore underrepresented in academic debates in the discipline.
Central Europe was historically shaped into a region of its own by various economic, political, and ideological structures. While we intentionally leave the geographic and cultural concept of the area undefined, it is unquestionable that its regional identity was shaped both from within and from the outside. From within, the Central European region always negotiated between its ethnically, linguistically, and culturally heterogeneous communities. This has produced various internal centres and relegated other areas to the position of the periphery. From the outside, Central Europe had to define its position in relation to other global players and transnational associations. These political and cultural circumstances played a crucial role in all areas of intellectual production, including academic research. Comparative literature was no exception and the discipline was often tasked with expanding or subverting established discourses. For instance, Central European comparatists had to acknowledge the rich history of multicultural and multilinguistic literary traditions in the area while at the same time establishing themselves in relation to other academic centres such as the French and the American schools of comparative literature. Despite its relevance for understanding Central European comparative literature, disciplinary self-perceptions and their relation to the internal and external exchange of knowledge have thus far remained unexplored.
An important forerunner of comparative literature was the Slavic philologist Matija Murko who offers a paradigmatic case study for addressing many of the questions raised above. Murko has built a long and successful academic career and has had an immense influence on the development of literary studies in Central Europe and elsewhere. After finishing his studies in Slavic philology at the University of Vienna, he travelled to Russia, became a professor in Graz and Leipzig, and later moved to Prague where he co-founded and headed the Slavonic Studies Institute at a time when the influential “Prague Linguistic Circle” was flourishing there. Both in his academic life and in his research, he has been moving between the academic centres and semi-peripheries of Central Europe, breaking academic barriers (for instance, with his comparative Slavic literary studies) and influencing younger scholars (such as Frank Wollman or Roman Jakobson). His work was appreciated both inside and far beyond Central Europe, so much so that his research on South Slavic oral literature is still considered referential today. Murko’s scholarship thus offers an excellent opportunity to explore topics, questions, methods, international collaborations, and the politics of knowledge prevalent in the history of Central European comparative literature.
We welcome all papers exploring topics related to comparative literature in Central Europe, but especially those that address any of the following questions:
The history of comparative literature in Central Europe: Which scholars, schools, topics, or methods have been most influential in Central European comparative literature? Have any been historically overlooked? Why has Central European comparative literature remained under-represented in academic debates on the history of comparative literature?
Academic connections between Central European comparative literature and other regions of the world: To what extent has the French littérature comparée influenced the development of comparative literature in Central Europe, and vice versa? What can be said about the interaction between Central European and Russian literary studies? What have Central European comparatists contributed to the pre- and post-Second World War American comparative literature?
Relations between centres and (semi-)peripheries within Central European comparative literature: What has led to the emergence of asymmetries in the development of comparative literature within Central European academia? How did inequalities in intellectual exchanges between different regions emerge? How were Central Europe’s multilinguistic literary traditions reflected in the field of comparative literature?
Matija Murko as an overlooked Central European comparatist: What is the significance of Murko’s scholarship for the development of Central European comparative literature? What was Murko’s role in the development of comparative Slavic studies? How did Murko envisage philology as a humanistic discipline and what place does his research on oral literature occupy in contemporary literary studies?
Among the Slavs that significantly influenced the beginnings of the formation of the scientific research of Indian literature and languages in Slavic countries, Murko emphasized the Pole Walenty Skorochód-Majewski, an archivist of the Kingdom of Poland, and his work O Slovenima i braći, which was published in 1816 in Warsaw. Murko[1] commented that the title of the work makes it hard to anticipate that the work is, virtually in its entirety, dedicated to the study of Sanskrit and Indian literature. Murko valued highly Majewski’s efforts; he described him as a person “deserving of the glory of being the first Slavic Sanskritist”,[2] since Majewski’s work established firm foundations for the further scientific research of the linguistic and literary worlds of India. Namely, Majewski did not merely string together cognates in a superficial manner, but also composed a grammar of Sanskrit, relying especially on the work of Johann Philipp Wesdin Bartholomeo, an Austrian missionary and orientalist of Croatian origins. Majewski even translated two books of the epic Rāmāyaṇa, together with a list of Sanskrit words to make reading easier.[3] In addition to this, he also translated the work Brahmavaivartapurāṇa with the added Latin translation of Adolphus Fridericus Stenzler.[4]
Walenty Skorochód-Majewski (1764–1835)
Majewski’s work was characterized by a passion for seeking comparisons between Indian and Slavic gods, beliefs and customs. In addition, his tireless search for sources – namely, he acquired all the works on the languages of Indians and Persians,[5] among others also the discussions of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, reviews of Schlegel’s work Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, and Bartholomeo’s Sanskrit grammar – eventually led to the theory of “the origin of Slavs on Ganges”.[6] Between 1813 and 1815 he gave many lectures on Sanskrit and Indian literature, with the common thread of Slavs and Indians originating from the same tribe. In his desire to prove the Indian ancestry of Slavs, he sacrificed all of his possessions,[7] and his studies contributed to intensifying the research on Slavic identity and nationality[8], especially in Poland. This, as Murko wrote, was not surprising, since Poles, after losing their country, idealized their history and national past[9] and leaned on the romantic image of the noble ur-nation of Slavs.
In his study, Murko added that despite the importance of Majewski’s research, the nature of the reception of India in his works was typical of Europe, namely that “in the romantic spirit, he desired to create an impression of a dark Slavic antiquity and ancient Slavic national culture”,[10] especially on the basis of linguistic relatedness. But the latter does not diminish the value and significance of his research. Namely, Murko did not only describe him as the first Pole, but also the first Slav who “included in his studies the farthest nations for his purposes”.[11]
Bibliography
Herling, Bradley L. The German Gita: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German Reception of Indian Thought. London: Routledge, 2016.
Murko, Matija. »Prvi uspoređivači sanskrita sa slovenskim jezicima.« CXXXII. knjiga Rada jugoslavenske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti, str. 103–115.
Petek, Nina. Bhagavadgita: onkraj vezi, tostran svobode. Maribor: Založba Pivec, 2022. Sharpe, Eric J. The Universal Gita: Western Images of the Bhagavad Gita a Bicentenary Survey. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1985.
[8] Ibid., 108. Majewski’s research also influenced the intellectuals in Prague, where some of his theories were also negatively received. Josef Dobrovsky was especially critical of Majewski, negating his hypotheses of the common origin of Slavs and Indians. But Dobrovsky, in Murko’s words, “had no romantic sensibilities” (ibid., 106).
As part of the project “Matija Murko and his collaborators”, Dr. Jan Ciglenečki (Department of Philosophy, FF UL) studies Matija Murko’s views on the so-called autochthonist theories, according to which Slavs were the first inhabitants of their present-day homeland. Murko thus began his discussion “Prvi uspoređivači sanskrita sa slovenskim jezicima” (1896) by remarking that the development of Indo-Germanic linguistics met with a strong response among Slavs, who began to develop romantic notions about the ancient origin of Slavs in ancient India, based on the linguistic similarities between Slavic languages and Sanskrit.
In Slovene lands, certain amateur linguists associated the assumption of Slavic antiquity with the patriotic theory that Slovenes are autochthonous on their current territory. This theory gained a great national awakening potential at the time of cultural tensions between Germans and Slovenes. The most prominent advocate of this pseudo-scientific theory was the belletrist, mythologist, etymologist, historian, liberal Catholic publicist, and the founder and first president of the Slovene Writers’ Association, Davorin Trstenjak (1817–1890), who Murko mentioned with respect multiple times in his memoirs. In the Manuscript collection of the National and University Library, there are 21 letters from Trstenjak to Murko.
Davorin Trstenjak (1817–1890)
An interesting analogy to Murko’s study of Homeric epic poetry are Trstenjak’s interpretations of the High German epic “Parzival”, composed by the Bavarian minnesänger Wolfram von Eschenbach at the beginning of the 13th century. In this poem, considered to be one of the greatest monuments of German literature, historically well-known places in what is today Slovenian Styria are mentioned in key parts, which particularly attracted Trstenjak’s attention.
The decisive turn on the spiritual path of the main character Parzival occurs when he visits the hermit Trevrizent on a Good Friday, and the hermit teaches him about his origins and the mysteries of the Holy Grail. In a long conversation with Parzival, Trevrizent reminisces about his knightly travels, which led him across three continents in the service of love (minnedienst). Although we learn little of his sojourns in Africa and Asia, the final leg of his journey is described in unusual detail. The latter led Trevrizent to Sevilla, where he met Parzival’s father Gahmuret, and then through Friuli to Aquileia. From there, he continued his journey to Celje and then Hajdina near Ptuj via Rogatec, where the description of the journey ends.
Concerning the toponyms associated with Southern Styria in Wolfram’s work, the river Drava (Trâ) and the stream Grajena (Greian) are mentioned among the watercourses, and Celje (Zilje), Rogatec (Rôhas), and Hajdina (Gandîne) among the place names. The explicit mention of the land of Styria can be added to these geographic designations. However, they are not the only testimony to the links with places in Southern Styria; there are also the personal names of certain protagonists with important roles in Wolfram’s poem. These are primarily, Gandîn, Parzival’s grandfather, who was named after the town Gandîne (Hajdina), and Parzival’s aunt Lammîre, who Wolfram describes as “the mistress of Styria”. In this context, Ither or “the Red Knight”, popular in Styria because of his intimate relationship with Lammîre, must also be mentioned.
The unexpected mentions of Styrian places and the literary characters associated with them stirred Trstenjak’s imagination. He vehemently interpreted certain places and characters through the lens of autochthonist theories and attempted to explain them on mythological and etymological grounds that were supposed to confirm their indisputably Slavic origins.
The personal name Gandin, used by Wolfram for Parzival’s grandfather, Trstenjak thus explained as an Old Slavic solar god and bard. The town Gandîne, said by Wolfram to be located on the confluence of the stream Grajena and the river Drava, is on the basis of this very information not placed in present-day Hajdina by Trstenjak, but rather on the left (northern) bank of Drava, close to contemporary Budina, a small village east of Ptuj. It was at this place, Trstenjak assumed, that the natives worshipped a sacred bowl, called the Holy Grail by Romance nations. Furthermore, his interpretation of the character Lammîre, Parzival’s aunt, described by Wolfram as “the mistress of Styria”, is also interesting, since Trstenjak associates her with the folk tradition of Lama Baba. His theories thus represent the first known interpretation of the parts of Wolfram’s epic that refer to the region of Southern Styria. Further research will clarify how Trstenjak’s scientifically naive, but nevertheless pioneering attempts at explanations influenced researchers after him.
As part of our project, Blaž Zabel has published an article about Matija Murko and his view of Homer in our University’s Clotho magazine (in the Slovenian language). The article is available on this link: https://journals.uni-lj.si/clotho/article/view/13517
At the centre of my “Murkological” interest is his treatment of South Slavic literature, especially the older Serbian and Croatian literature. One of the primary components of Murko’s research is undoubtedly both his field (the collection of material) and theoretical work on South Slavic folk epic poetry. In this sense, my research will be focused on what was the literary-historical, but also general methodological contribution of Murko’s study of oral poetry in the Balkans in the context of analogous literary studies of his time. In addition to this, as a sort of a control and corrective measure, I will also tackle Murko’s study of Early Modern Croatian literary corpus, especially the renaissance and baroque texts of Dubrovnik and Dalmatia, which have so far not been the subject of in-depth scholarly thematizations. The analysis of thus delimited Murko’s literary studies will enable shedding light on Murko’s general literary history method (including the differences with his Slavist predecessors, e.g. F. Miklošič and V. Jagić) and its significance in the framework of general literary historiography at the end of the 19th and in the first decades of the 20th century, as well as its potential present-day relevance.
“Guslar” is a traditional folk singer, performing long narrative tales and accompanying himself on a one- or two-stringed instrument, known as a gusle (gusla).
