Slovenská literatúra

5

Authors: Miloslav Vojtech

Review

11

Authors: Magdalena Bystrzak

The paper outlines one of the forms of melancholy in the literary discourse of Slovak romanticism. As regards materials, it is based on egodocuments by Mikuláš Dohnány (1824 – 1852), in particular his diaries (1850 – 1852) and correspondence (1839 – 1852), as regards research, it is focused on the conflict between the latent (melancholy) and manifested (heroic and messianic) lines of the author´s production. The antagonism between the ideal and the reality forms the basis for M. Dohnány´s life experience and it is also noticeable in his intimate diary records. The subject of the analysis is the performative and functional nature of Dohnány´s diaries, which feature so-called self-disciplining comments prompting the author to take action, to make a difference. Dohnány´s melancholy, which has several romantic characteristics (it is based on negation, inward oriented, attached to the „inner self ”), remains hidden thanks to them and is subject to the self-control mechanism as it does not correspond with the ideal of a „ brave Štúr´s follower“, which Dohnány kept trying to put into practice.

15

Authors: Eva Palkovičová

The paper focuses on Slovak prose written in the 1860s. The first part maps the social and cultural context of literary production and the state of the national emancipation process which received new impulses in the new political situation during the period of time between the end of absolutism and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867. The other part of the paper pays attention to social novellas written by Mikuláš Štefan Ferienčík (1825 – 1881), Daniel Bachát (1840 – 1906), Viliam Pauliny-Tóth (1826 – 1877) and Štefan Križan (1826 – 1894), which comply with new requirements laid down on prose, namely to entertain, to attract and to educate the bourgeois audience as well as to address their national awareness. The works of prose mentioned above feature an idyllic topos characteristic of the 19th century Slovak literary discourse. It either has a form of a „lovely place“ in a remote forest settlement which keeps the world of civilization at a distance or a „happy home“ which stays in a close contact with it. Despite certain remnants of romantic poetics, which may be disclosed in representations of an idyllic topos, the writings present a rather biedermeier-like attitude towards the reality: the ordinary is shown as a celebration or a ritual, they try to establish harmony between the idyllic place and the outer world, the community of a family or friends is depicted as a place that is a guarantee of moral values and national freedom.

22

Authors: Zuzana Cepková Feješová

The main problem investigated by the paper is the self in literature and its constructability. The research materials include selected works of Slovak poetry and the methodological background is provided by social constructivism of the German literary scientist and theoretician of communication Siegfried Schmidt. The paper focuses on the self in the processes of forming and receiving works by two Slovak contemporary experimental authors, Peter Macsovszky and Michal Habaj. It seems that their innovative and subversive strategies correspond to a certain degree with antirealistic assumptions of Schmidt´s methodology. A significant part of the experiments is played by challenging the category of the self, which is presented as a grammatical illusion, a linguistic game or virtual fiction. Reading of the texts suggests that the inner-textual self of a literary work created in a text interpretation is not always a sufficient category. In some cases it will be beneficial to look over the text, incorporate a literary phenomenon in the system of literature and a particular social and historical context and subsequently observe the behaviour of the actants who are involved in constructing the phenomena. This step makes it possible to examine the strategies which raise questions and verify the terminology of literary science.