Slovenian literary history discussed Austrian censorship in Carniola during the Pre-March Era mainly through the conflict between the Romantic poet Prešeren and backward secular and church authorities. This article changes the perspective by examining the paradox of censor as an instrument of imperial thought control and a trained expert resembling the literary critic. In the period of Metternich’s absolutist policing, censorship was inadvertently individualized. How censors relied on their aesthetic judgement, prestige, and strategies is shown by the treat-ment of the almanac Krajnska čbelica by Kopitar and Čop in the 1830s. During the “Slovenian alphabet war,” Kopitar’s Herderianism collided with the Romantic cosmopolitanism of Prešeren and Čop, who advocated the impor-tance of aesthetic autonomy for the national movement.
