Early literary representations of national history and the "Slovene cultural syndrome"

The paper deals with the early representations of national history in Slovene literature. Two cohesive stories, "Illyric" and "Carantanian", proved to be most characteristic and appealing in poetical works before 1848. From a historiographical point of view, both were deficiently documented or even problematic, and in literature they gained mythological features. These historical fragments have to be observed in the light of the later thesis of the "Slovene cultural syndrome", which was often used to describe the relationship between Slovene literature and the political project of national emancipation. The paper tries to ascertain in which way literature actually "replaced" politics and attempts to revise some elements of the popular thesis.