Motif of nature in the selected children's poems by Oton Župančič

Oton Župančič is a Slovenian poet, playwright and translator, born on January 23rd 1878 in Vinica, Bela Krajina. He was the second-born of father Franc Župančič and mother Ana, born Malič. Despite all the poetic opus, when we think about Župančič, we surely remember his most popular poetic collection for children and youth Ciciban in še kaj (1915), even before it, he created Pisanice (1900) for youth, which was his first poetic collection for youth, and the poetic collection with a picture book Lahkih nog naokrog (1912), which was created during the time, when the poet was a teacher in Germany. Through the poets for youth, the poet spoke convincingly and kindly about fundamental values, like goodness, love of country and for the mother, truthfulness and love of the native word. In the poets for youth, the poet’s connection and respect for nature can be perceived, but particularly his love for his home town, from which he drew energy and inspiration for new creations. The graduation thesis consists of the theoretical and empirical part. In the theoretical part I first present the biography of Oton Župančič and continue with the presentation of the literary science ecocriticism, where I present the development of ecocriticism and its research questions, which were described in the introduction of the publication The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology by Cheryll Glotfelty. Summarized are also the opinions and researches, stressed out by the professor Jožica Čeh Steger (2012), and the opinions and researches of other authors, who complemented her findings. The theoretical part concludes with the discussion of Maria Nikolajeva (2003) about the connection of the verbal-visual relation in picture books. The goal of the graduation thesis is to present the relatively young literary science ecocriticism and extend its knowledge even to the preschool period. In the empirical part of the graduation thesis, I wanted to identify the poet’s attitude towards nature and how it is presented in poems. I also wanted to identify the verbal-visual relation in a poem and illustration from the poetic collection Lahkih nog naokrog. I analysed the selected poems using ecocriticism and its thematic fields, and in the case of poems with illustrations, I also analysed the verbal-visual relation according to the discussion by Maria Nikolajeva, where I used the comparative method. In the empirical part, I used the methods of analysis and synthesis