France Prešeren’s Poems – From Misunderstanding to Teaching

An empirical study of understanding The Baptism at the Savica showed that Slovenian high school students had notable difficulties in decoding the basic meanings of Prešeren’s poem. In literature, didactics offer three methods of facilitating reception of complex classical poetry: linguistic modernisation, addition of notes, and transmission into prose. Due to the cult status of Prešeren’s poetry, modernizations can only be limited, while commenting hinders a spontaneous reading experience; as a result, only prosification entirely solves the problems of pronounced archaization, inverted word order and abundant metaphors in Prešeren’s lines. This was confirmed by an empirical study in which high school students, who read the prosification together with the verses from The Baptism at the Savica, attested a comprehension which was twice as good as comprehension of students who only read the poetry