Lili Novy (1885–1956) was a German-Slovenian poet whose work is situated within the tensions of the Habsburg multiethnic empire, the interwar period, and the nationally shaped culture of Yugoslavia. Her case exemplifies how national affiliations shift within (post-)imperial contexts and how language policy and cultural hierarchies can influence literary careers. While she is regarded in Slovenian literary history as a major 20th-century poet, her extensive German-language oeuvre was long marginalised. This study analyses Novy’s literary production through the lens of the concepts of transdifference (Lösch, Breinig) and symbolic capital (Bourdieu) in order to trace her hybrid identity and the mechanisms of literary inclusion and exclusion in the post-imperial space. How can her work be located beyond binary national categories? And to what extent does her writing illustrate the tensions between individual identities and hegemonic discourses of belonging?
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