Imago Turci’ in Christian Slovenia

Abstract

Through the discourse analysis of the Turkish stories Jurij Kozjak, slovenski janičar (1864) and Miklova Zala: zgodba iz turških časov (1884), the research aims to examine the role of religion and religious otherness in the formation of Slovenian identity. The paper centres on observing the development of a specific heuristic of Orientalism— summarised by Gingrich’s notion of ‘frontier Orientalism’ (1996)—in Slovenian literature and draws the similarities and differences with Edward Said’s noted theoretical paradigm. As this mytho-literary production of ‘imago Turci’ presents a strong basis for contemporary debates on Islam in Slovenian public discourse, the analysis actualises the archaic portrayals of Muslims and observes their reproductions in modern contexts.