The tradition of the European sentimentalism, one of the creative elements at the beginning of the Slovene novel, adjusted and even subordinated itself to the role played by literature in the national movement and the formation of modern bourgeois society in the Slovene territory. Therefore in narrative prose from the 1960s to 1880s, the bourgeois self-confidence and Rousseauianism - which were cosmopolitan by their origin in the Enlifgtenment sentimentalism - were in a peculiar way combined with the aspirations for national affirmation. An important element of the sentimental novel, Weltschmerz, which proved to be less compatible with patriotic enthusiasm, was criticised and even rejected within the novels themselves.
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