Imagology in Literary Studies

The students will obtain a theoretical knowledge of imagology in Literary Studies. They will be able to recognize and appropriately study, from a methodological point of view, literary representations of the Other. At the same time, they will be able to further develop their theoretical knowledge in the field of imagology

In order to join the course, the students need to be familiar with the main concept of trans-culturalism and have some good previously acquired knowledge in the field of literary studies. A prerequisite for the course's final examination is active participation during contact hours and a completed seminar assignment in the field of literary imagology.

This course introduces the students to the main representatives of literary imagology in Slovenia and abroad and enables them to obtain methodological, theoretical, and terminological knowledge of this specific, relatively new area of comparative literature. The students will study a selected corpus of Slovene and foreign literature in which the image of the Other occurs. A special emphasis will be given to the literary image of the Other (a Slovene or an Italian person) in Slovene and Italian literature. The selected corpus of texts frequently features a regional image of the Other, an image that results from the writer’s experiences with a foreign culture as found in the areas of today’s Primorska region (Slovenia) and the Friuli and Venezia Giulia regions (Italy). Hence the course will familiarize the students with the specifics of this multicultural space and will help them discover and understand the complex, and sometimes deliberately hidden, literarized usages of the image of the Other. As part of the course, we will also have visiting lecturers from the field of humanities and social sciences, specifically those whose research deals with the border-related questions; there will be excursions and professional meetings with individuals and cultural institutes in Primorska (Slovenia) and Videm, Gorizia and Trieste regions (Italy). The knowledge obtained during the course will be applied by students in their own imagological analysis of a chosen literary work. With students whose knowledge of Slovene and Italian is not good enough to tackle the literary texts, the research work will be directed towards studying an appropriate literature closest to the students' linguistic and cultural competences. The results of all the students’ imagological analyses will be presented in a seminar session an will serve as a starting point for discussing the similarities and differences, and specific features of the literary image of the Other in different cultural environments and different time frames.

On the horizontal syllabus line, the course is connected with the following courses: Literatures in contacts, Literature and cultural nationalism in Europe.

Knowledge and understanding:
In the final stage of lectures, the students will have prepared their seminar work (an imagological analysis of a literary work of art, applying an appropriate methodological approach and imagological terminology).

Knowledge and understanding of the theory and methodology of literary imagology.

Basic:

• Beller, Manfred and Joep Leerssen (ur.): Imagology. The cultural construction and literary representation of national characters. A critical survey. Studia Imagologica, Volume: 13. Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi. Catalogue
• Doorslaer, Luc van, Peter Flynn and Joep Leerssen (eds.): Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology. John Benjamins.
• Pageaux, Daniel-Henri, 2008: Imagološke razprave. Prev. Gregor Perko. Ljubljana: ISH. 1-63. Catalogue
• Smolej, Tone (ur.): Podoba tujega v slovenski književnosti. Podoba Slovenije v tuji književnosti. Ljubljana: Oddelek za primerjalno književnost. 9-20. Catalogue

Additional:

• Zrinka Blažević, 2014: Global Challenge: The (Im)possibilities of Transcultural Imagology. Umjetnost riječi/ The Art of Words, LVIII, 3-4. 355-367. E-version
• Deganutti, Marianna, 2024: Literary Multilingualism in the Borderlands. The Challenge of Trieste. New York, Oxon: Routledge. 1-68.
• Even-Zohar, Itamar. “The Role of Literature in the Making of the Nations of Europe.” Applied Semiotics/Sémiotique appliguée 1.1 (1996): 39–59.
• Hutcheon, Linda, 2002: Rethinking the national model. Hutcheon, Linda in J. Valdes, Mario (ur.): Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory. Oxford University Press. 3–49. E-version
• Leben, Andrej, 2021: Model in pojem nadregionalnega literarnega interakcijskega prostora (na osnovi literature koroških Slovenk in Slovencev). Koron, Alenka & Leben, Andrej (ur.): Literarna večjezičnost v slovenskem in avstrijskem kontekstu. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC. 59–72. Catalogue
• Leerssen, Joep, 2006. Nationalism and the cultivation of culture. Nations and Nationalism. 559–578. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8129.2006.00253.x
• Leerssen, Joep, 2016: Imagology: On using ethnicity to make sense of the world. Iberic@l 10, 13-31. E-version
• Živančević-Sekeruš, Ivana, 2008: Literary education - (re)shaping our past/present/future perception of the other. Ur. Boža Krakar Vogel. Književnost v izobraževanju – cilji, vsebine, metode. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta, Oddelek za slovenistiko, Center za slovenščino kot drugi/tuji jezik, 219–223. Catalogue E-version

Lectures, discussion analysis of literary texts (group and individual) preparation of papers and seminar assignments in the field of literary imagology

Prof. dr. Ana Toroš is employed at the Faculty of Humanities and at the Research Center for the Humanities of the University of Nova Gorica (UNG). In addition to pedagogical and research work, she is the director of the study program Humanities III. degree, which operates within the Faculty of Postgraduate Studies of UNG. Her research is focused on the field of regional comparative literature and literary imagology, and she is interested in multilingual literature in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region (Italy) and in the Goriška and Obalno-kraška regions. In this context, she dealt with the literary work of Alojz Gradnik and Trieste poetry of the first half of the 20th century. Recently, she has been conducting a research on authors of the 20th and 21st centuries in the Goriška and Udine regions, writing in Slovene, Friulian, Italian and German. She also researches minority literature in Trieste and Slovenian Istria from a comparative point of view.

1. TOROŠ, Ana. Poetic representations of Trieste in the 20th century. Annales : anali za istrske in mediteranske študije. Series historia naturalis. [Tiskana izd.]. 2022, vol.32, no. 1, str. 53-62. ISSN 1408-533X. DOI: 10.19233/ASHS.2022.03. [COBISS.SI-ID 116942595], [SNIP, WoS, Scopus]
   kategorija: 1B (Z); uvrstitev: Scopus, MBP (ASFA, BIOABS, BIOPREW, ZR, MABC); tip dela še ni verificiran
   točke: 40, št. avtorjev: 1
2. TOROŠ, Ana. The coded literary discourse of the Senjam Song Festival of Benečija. Razprave in gradivo : revija za narodnostna vprašanja. [Tiskana izd.]. 2022, no. 88, str. 49-66. ISSN 0354-0286. DOI: 10.36144/RiG88.jun22.49-66. [COBISS.SI-ID 113720579], [SNIP, Scopus]
   kategorija: 1A3 (Z, A', A1/2); uvrstitev: Scopus (d), MBP (HA, IBZ, IBSS, SA, IPSA, WPSA); tip dela je verificiral OSICH
   točke: 69.71, št. avtorjev: 1
3. TOROŠ, Ana. Marisa Madieri, Jan Morris and Irena Žerjal : English, Istrian Triestine and Slovene literarisation of Trieste and the surrounding area at the end of World War II. Annales : anali za istrske in mediteranske študije. Series historia et sociologia. [Tiskana izd.]. 2021, letn. 31, št. 3, str. 475-486, ilustr. ISSN 1408-5348. https://zdjp.si/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ASHS_31-2021-3_Toro%C5%A1.pdf, DOI: 10.19233/ASHS.2021.30. [COBISS.SI-ID 91966979], [SNIP, WoS, Scopus do 14. 9. 2022: št. citatov (TC): 1, čistih citatov (CI): 1, čistih citatov na avtorja (CIAu): 1,00]
   financer: ARRS, Historične interpretacije 20. stoletja, P6-0347
   kategorija: 1A3 (Z, A', A1/2); uvrstitev: Scopus (h), Scopus (d), AHCI, MBP (ERIHPLUS, HA, IBZ, SA); tip dela je verificiral OSICH
   točke: 71.52, št. avtorjev: 1
4. TOROŠ, Ana. Minority literature in the majority language : a new paradigm? : the case of the Slovenian poetry in Italy. Annales : anali za istrske in mediteranske študije. Series historia et sociologia. [Tiskana izd.]. 2021, letn. 31, št. 2, str. 355-362, ilustr. ISSN 1408-5348. https://zdjp.si/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ASHS_31-2021-2.pdf, DOI: 10.19233/ASHS.2021.23. [COBISS.SI-ID 91969283], [SNIP, WoS]
   financer: ARRS, Historične interpretacije 20. stoletja, P6-0347
   kategorija: 1A3 (Z, A', A1/2); uvrstitev: Scopus (h), Scopus (d), AHCI, MBP (ERIHPLUS, HA, IBZ, SA); tip dela je verificiral OSICH
   točke: 71.52, št. avtorjev: 1
5. TOROŠ, Ana. Minority literature and collective trauma : the case of Slovene Triestine literature. Razprave in gradivo : revija za narodnostna vprašanja. [Tiskana izd.]. jun. 2021, no. 86, str. 65-81. ISSN 0354-0286. DOI: 10.36144/RiG86jun21.65-81. [COBISS.SI-ID 69028355], [SNIP]
   financer: ARRS, Historične interpretacije 20. stoletja, P6-0347
   kategorija: 1A3 (Z, A', A1/2); uvrstitev: Scopus (d), MBP (HA, IBZ, IBSS, SA, IPSA, WPSA); tip dela je verificiral OSICH