Johan Huizinga in der Slowakei
Johan Huizinga in Slovakia

Readings and critical discussions in the period 1946–1990

Summary/Abstract: In a series of sequences, the contribution traces the reception of Johan Huizinga in Slovak culture and humanities after 1945. After the Second World War, Huizinga was discovered for the first time by a conservative circle of Slovak Catholic intellectuals who appreciated both his cultural criticism (especially his work Geschonden wereld) and his vision of the Late Middle Ages as a colourful and rich period in European culture. Since the early 1950s, Huizinga’s name has appeared in the works of Jozef Felix, the founder of modern Romance studies in Slovakia, who used some of Huizinga’s historical arguments in a contemporary discussion on literary realism, defending the presence of artistic realism in the Middle Ages. In the early 1970s, the Czech translation of Homo Ludens strongly influenced the alternative culture in Slovakia, but in dissident circles it also opened a new perspective on alternative thinking on science. After 1989, the Slovak translation of The Waning of the Middle Ages and Homo Ludens formed the background of the discussion about pluralism in Slovak historiography

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