Kultura (Skopje) (Mar 2015)
IMAGE OF »THE TURK« IN SLOVENE FOLKLORE
Abstract
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
