Slovenská literatúra

3

Authors: Lenka Rišková

Kollárová, Ivona: In secret. Adangerous idea and non-transparency of communication networks in times of unrest (1789 – 1799)

4

Authors: Milan Kolesík

Kuzmíková, Jana: Cognitive Literary Science: Theory, Experiments

8

Authors: Marta Fülöpová

The writer, poet, and teacher Ján Kalinčiak (1822 – 1871) is a representative of the strand of Slovak Romantic fiction that accentuates the subject. His oeuvre helps build the individualistic, heroic variant of Slovak Romanticism,putting emphasis on the individual and freedom – also in relation to the nation. For Kalinčiak, Romanticism was not just a way of artistic self-expression, but also a path towards personal heroism. Kalinčiak’s leaning towards Romanticism is demonstrated among other things in the fact that hedrew on European schools of thought concerning such issues as the portrayals of knightly characters. These drew on mediaeval models preferred in the poetics of Romanticism. Kalinčiak modelled his literary world on the basis of the concept of noble rivals, equal adversaries and his portrayals abstained from building negative characters. His version of Romanticism is not based on the fight between good and evil, but on the struggle between two competing visions of the world which in their search for authenticity naturally get into conflict. While his historical fiction is undeniably Romantic, his best known work, Reštavrácia ([County elections], 1860) used to be regarded as a transitional piece bearing elements of Realism. Current research, however, regards it as Romantic.

13

Authors: Lucia Szabóová

The presented paper takes a look at Pavel Vilikovský’s (1941 – 2020) novella Fleeting Snow (2014). It adopts the lens of reception theory and demonstrates the use of the so-called textual gaps and places of indeterminacy (Wolfgang Iser, Wolf Schmid). The selected literary text is specific mainly for its composition and narrator. The story is divided into short and concise segments marked with a number and a letter: The number expresses the theme, the letter the sequence of narration. The textual gaps can be identified at the level of composition, narrator, and metaphor. The reader has to homogenise the heterogeneous elements involved in the production of meaning at the level of narration and composition of the text. However, this does not mean that the reader can identify and remove all textual gaps: these remain objects of reflection even after reading the entire text. The aim of this article is to (1) demonstrate how places of indeterminacy can be understood in a specific literary text, (2) determine which parts of Fleeting Snow can be considered as places of indeterminacy, and (3) which places of indeterminacy present the keyissues, topics, and aspects of the text.

13

Authors: Ivan Halász – Gábor Schweitzer

Elections were a stable part of Hungarian political culture even before the eventful year of 1848. As such they were reflected in individual national literatures written in Hungary – especially in the Hungarian and Slovak ones. The novel by Ján Kalinčiak (1822 – 1871) Reštavrácia ([County elections], 1860) was thus not the only literary text that portrayed these events. In 1842, the popular Hungarian playwright Ignác Nagy (1810 – 1854) published a comedy under the same title. The novel by Ján Kalinčiak, despite the fact that it was published later, is much less political in its nature than Nagy’s play which in the context of county elections addressed such issues as the emancipation of women, the rights of Jews and the elimination of the political monopoly and tax advantages enjoyed by the gentry. Kalinčiak was primarily concerned with portraying a familial dispute between two gentry families in a fictitious county in northern Hungary. The dispute was resolved harmoniously and the national issues were addressed only marginally. Nevertheless, the novel and the play still have a lot in common. Besides the described social environment and the character of the main plot, these concern the frequent use of Latin expressions and dated language in general, the relatively realistic description of the events, frequent humorous motives, and the fact that the ending bears features of biedermeier style.

16

Authors: Marta Fülöpová

The article tackles the portrayals of the gentry in the writing ofJán Kalinčiak (1822 – 1871) in the Hungarian cultural context. Literature written in Hungary had multiple ties with the gentry: the literary works frequently tackled the topic and many authors – and their readers – belonged to this social class. The article identifies the humorous Hungarian encyclopaedia Hungaria in parabolis (1804) authored by the Hungarian scholar Antal Szirmay (1747 – 1812) as the reference frame for the period portrayals of the gentry. The encyclopaedia synthesised auto-stereotypes of the Hungarian gentry. A comparison of Kalinčiak’s characteristics of Hungarian lower nobility with the one developed by Szirmay shows that the former’s portrayal of this social class as outlined through such issues as theimage of the homeland, history, clothing, and customswas in coherence with the general image of the gentry in Hungary at that time. Kalinčiak also tackled the typical attributes of gentry’s speech (anecdotal expressions, humorous undertone, discussing legal disputes, the use of idioms). Kalinčiak’s novel Reštavrácia ([County elections], 1860) deals with the topic of county elections.