This paper attempts to shed light on the image of Napoleon’s French forces that invaded and briefly conquered Slovene lands in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as depicted in Slovene folklore. ...In some legends, we can recognize an echo of the historical reality of the time of French invasions and their rule. These portray the hardships of this foreign occupation, the exploitation of the population by the French and their cruelty and conflicts with them, yet some show a more favourable relationship or even depict humorous accounts (especially in relation with linguistic misunderstandings) with the French, while some aspects of their rule are completely ignored by folklore. In some cases, the French are narrated into stories that explain certain features of the physical environment of the community, and in some legends they are depicted as coming from the world beyond and are attributed supernatural traits. In some folklore examples, the interchangeability of different historical invaders is attested. We can generalize that the French are seen as “the Others” in Slovene folklore and have, as such, acquired different roles in folklore to serve diverse needs of the community in the sense of strengthening its own identity, rationalizing its physical landscape, and taking part in the beliefs about the supernatural and the world beyond.
This paper presents and compares the image of “the barbaric Turk” in the politicalideological discourses and the perception of “the Turk” as a dangerous, cosmos-disturbing Foreigner in Slovene ...folklore. The centuries-old concept of “the barbarian”, ideological propaganda and the archaic fear of the threatening Outsider in traditional culture all contributed in the process formation of a certain imagery of “the Turk”.
Based on Slovenian folklore from the second half of the 19th century, the paper addresses the unexplored topic of the intermixing of folklore with Catholicism and the role of this folklore in the ...process of Slovenian nation building. Based on an analysis of articles published in the newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice, the author of the paper reveals an inconsistent discourse with regard to the vernacular Slovenian religiosity: everything associated with Christianity is praised, while nonChristian folklore elements are either praised ("Pagan remnants") or condemned ("superstition"). In the search for enchantment, which is seemingly disappearing due to modernisation, Slovenian intellectuals projected the wonderous into the past and the lower levels of society. Vernacular religiosity in 19th century Slovenian lands is distinctly multilayered and eludes moral evaluations and any attempts to control it. The original contribution of the article is an analysis of the use and reinterpretation of folklore with religious elements in the process of Slovenian nation building and the role of the concept of „enchantment" in the perception of folklore at that time.
An analysis of Slovenian legends about Turkish raids was made to identify and analyze religious elements in them. The legends express superiority of Christianity, but also contain belief elements ...that diverge from Christian teachings, such as traditional Slavic beliefs about the afterlife. The mixture of different beliefs can summarized under the term "vernacular religion". The Turks in folklore represented an archetypal demonic "Other" and as such they threaten the "Our" world. In these legends traditional and pre-Christian beliefs were intermixed with Christian symbolism and characters and as such they express the diversity and flexibility of religious imagery.
Presented are the perceptions of different foreigners who came to Slovene lands in the past or in the present time, as shown in Slovene folk narratives. Despite often stereotyped picture of the ...Others, the research demonstrates an immense complexity of these narratives and the fact that they tell more about Us than about Them. The book ('The Mysteriou Stranger and the Demonic Enemy. “The Other” and Otherness in Slovene Folk Narratives') brings a theoretical overview of the current research on otherness in folklore studies and contextualizes the examples into a wider international folkloristic, anthropological and historical frames. Stories about the Turks, the Napoleon’s French and the Huns reflect an interweaving of historical facts, archetypical imageries of the dangerous Foreigner and ideological influences. These narratives are strongly embedded into the landscape and reinforce the sense of a common identity of its members. The imagery of historic aggressors is understandably quite different from the imagery of Jews and the Roma, with whom the people of the Slovene lands have had a completely different kind of contact.The same goes for contemporary foreigners from other countries. Nevertheless, they all display a high level of stereotypization, generalization and projection of fears upon “the Other”.
Legends about the time of the Turkish raids form an important and substantial part of the Slovene oral traditions. A closer examination of their content reveals a mixture of mythologized historical ...events from the time of the Turkish raids that are preserved in the Slovene collective memory (thou influenced by different ideological agendas), elements that are in their core mythological and use the time of the Turkish raids more or less as a chronological frame, and elements that ex-press the archaic fear of “the Other”, which is the basic component of the image of “the Turk” in Slovene folklore. Materialization of these legends in the physical land-scape also expresses this multi-layered image of “the Turk” – from the “places of memory” that can be histori-cally confirmed to those that are just imagined and per-ceived as such – they all express a certain imagery that the community has about it’s own past and it’s under-standing and rationalization of the (physical) world that surrounds them. The predominantly negative and al-most demonized image of “the Turk” is an important part of the Slovene identity, collective memory and oral narratives
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