Kuidas seletada võru vaimu? Lõunaeesti kirjanduse vaimust uuemates proosateostes [Explicating Võru Spirit: On exceptional spirit of Southern Estonian fiction in the modern works of prose]

The current article is based on the master thesis thataims to fi nd explanations for the abstract concept called Võru or Southern Estonian spirit based on the features that can be found in the works of fi ction. In order to specify these features, the study examined fi ve works of Southern Estonian prose from the years 1998–2012. As a result of the textual analysis the following aspects regarding the Southern Estonian spirit in fi ction have been determined: fi rstly, this phenomenon can be associated to autobiographical or documental moments that can rather be seen as biographies of families or communities not individuals; secondly, the spirit can be explained based on the idyllic lifestyle of the archaic community that has been valued in Southern Estonian literature; thirdly, the spirit can occur in the pursuits of comprehending the socalled mythological consciousness of the archaic ancestors; fourthly, it can be associated to the particular tension in one’s mind between the responsibility regarding the origin that carries traditional values and hunger for innovation that supposes leaving the past. All above mentioned features depend on the phenomenon of meaningful place in the Southern Estonian fi ction that acts as a frame for the other explanations for the spirit.KeywordsSouthern Estonian language and culture, local identity, autobiography and fiction, community, mythological consciousness, spirit of a place, place and memory, literature in Võru dialect, Estonian language and its dialect