Zgodbe in prostor

In her book Zgodbe in prostor ('Stories and Space'), Katarina Šrimpf Vendramin explores and presents the oral tradition of the Upper Sotla Valley along the Slovenian–Croatian border. The first part of the book offers a historical overview of collecting and publishing narrative heritage, and the second part presents contemporary field material and text, texture, and context analysis. The volume highlights the role and importance of literary folklore in the social and cultural life of the region studied. Etiological narratives, historical stories, and tales about mythological creatures are used to present the concepts of the liminal space and time (the chronotope) and the correlation between oral tradition and the formation of collective identities and collective memory. In a border region, narrative tradition is especially important for creating identities—on the one hand, through narratives about the “other” (i.e., that which is different) and, on the other hand, through stories that evoke a feeling of local belonging and establishing a local identity in both the narrator and the audience.