Robinzonády v ľudovom čítaní na Slovensku v 19. storočí
Robinsonades in 19th-Century Slovakian Popular Prose Romances

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this study is to present the basic context of literary research on popular literature in Slovakia, following studies by Věra Brožová (2008) and Jiří Hrabal (2022), looking specifically at the forms of 19th-century Robinsonades, including Czech Robinsonades reprinted in Slovakia from the late 18th century through the 19th century. With the exception of a single edition of Pavel Šulc’s adaptation, we know of no adaptations of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in the Czech context to have been published in Slovak editions; this is surprising considering the popularity of the theme and rich history of Czech adaptations, and we believe that further investigation is required. This study therefore distinguishes between the ‘Robinsonade’ and ‘folk Robinsonade’, with respect to the different motivations for adapting Defoe’s work in the context of Slovakian popular literature: that is, between the Robinsonade as a line started by the Czech translation of J. Campe’s German adaptation Robinson der Jüngere (and subsequent adaptations by V. Kramerius’s and others; the ‘Czech Story’ follows, for example, the aforementioned study by Hrabal), and various other works that draw instead on the success of Defoe’s novel to create adventure stories based on the Robinson theme. The heroes of these stories — Berthold, Ildegert, Spelhofen, and Engelbrecht — are known from both Czech and Slovak editions. The results of this comparison, together with an examination of the factors that may have caused these changes at all investigated levels, are formulated as manifestations of specific forms of inter-literary reception, namely ‘retellings’ with omission and expansion (Robinson der Jüngere), and — as examples of the ‘folk Robinsonade’ — adaptation (Berthold), plagiarism (Ildegert), interliterary allusion (Spelhofen), and allusion (Engelbrecht). Changes in form are found to be directly proportional to the degree of application of the poetics of popular literature.

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