Motiv mesta Ljubljana v slovenski (mladinski) književnosti – Literarna Ljubljana

The starting point of the article, which forms an integral part of a broader research project, is the thesis that, in modern times, especially after Slovenia’s accession to the European Union in 2004, national languages, literature and culture have become even more important. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, literary studies related to (literary) history, while at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, geography gained a new meaning. Thus, one of the research areas is the connection between youth literary studies and geography, i.e., the interdisciplinary connection that Juvan calls the spatial turn in literary scholarship. The Slovenian ethnic territory is multilingual and multicultural; it has belonged to different cultures, which is reflected in Slovenian youth literature as a literary culture. At the same time, Slovenian youth literature has also influenced the area of Slovenian literary culture, by naming various things after persons and literary characters. This is the interaction of space with Slovenian youth literature (e.g., the motif of Ljubljana in Slovenian youth literature, mountain stories about Kekec, etc.) and vice versa, i.e., the influence of original Slovenian youth literature on the physical space (naming of monuments and memorials after youth writers and/or characters). The article focuses on the period of Slovenian youth literature, and in particular on youth classics (F. Prešeren, F. Levstik), contemporary classics (K. Brenk, N. Grafenauer, L. Kovačič, S. Makarovič) and contemporaries (M. Komelj, P. Svetina, A. Štefan, J. Vidmar, etc.).