Matija Ogrin (Slovenska Akademija Znanosti in Umetnosti, Ljubljana)
The greater part of Slovenian literature has come into existence during the Early Modern and Modern period, i.e. in the era of printed books. But, surprisingly, many Slovenian texts of Early Modern time never succeeded to enter the medium of what we now call the print culture – for several historical reasons, ranging from material to ideological. Nevertheless, these texts had their own public and reception, their own ways of reproduction and dissemination – by means of what we call the manuscript culture. In this way, numerous manuscripts of hymnals, meditative prose and other devotional literature (Erbauungsliteratur), and even Jesuit drama in Slovenian language, were not supported by the printing press and the book market. Instead, they continued to fulfill their cultural mission and function in the medium of manuscript culture – as a separate, manuscript layer of literature. In some areas of the Slovenian literary system, this was the case as long as until the mid 19th century.
These manuscript literature is an ideal object for research approaches, using the methods of Digital Humanities. The lecture gives an outline of the analysis and description of manuscripts for the Register of Early Modern Slovenian Manuscripts that rely on Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines (TEI).