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This article analyzes the Slovak novel René mládenca príhody a skúsenosti (1783–1785) by Jozef Ignác Bajza as a frontier orientalist fantasy. Unlike in Western European orientalist texts,where images of alien Muslim cultures served as a justification for imperialism, here they are used to fashion a Slovak modernity, confirming the Slovak people’s Christian, European and Slavic identity at a time when it was politically just starting to come into being as a nation. It is further argued that the novel departs from the typical Western orientalist fantasy, figured as a heterosexual heroic romance, towards the narrative of homo-social nationalist self-fashioning.
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The study presents the analysis of prose works for children and youth in terms of the frequency of the theme of a human with social or health disadvantage and the ways of his/her portrayal. The analysed sample comprised both original and translated production published in Slovakia in the period between 1850 – 1948. The authors analysed the sample in terms of: 1. presence of social and health disadvantage (with a focus on somatic and sensory impairment, and intellectual disability) in the prosaic works; 2. modifications and function of this topic in the structure of the literary works and in a relation to the recipient; 3. modifications that the topic was subjected to in portrayal of relationship of society towards a person with social and health disadvantage. Based on the analysis, there were formulated the conclusions on attitudes adopted by the then contemporary society towards a human with social and health disadvantage and in the literary renderings for children and youth in Slovakia.
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The role of school as an educational-upbringing institution has to change in the 21st century. One response to the current problems of education is a broader definition of literacy. The author of the article focuses on moral literacy as one of the new literacies, which he considers to be one of the necessary parts of upbringing and education. Another response to improve the contemporary situation is to apply a holistic approach in teaching school subjects. The author of the article is trying to show the integration of literary competence and moral competence through content analysis of literary texts by writer P. Karpinský. The basic resource for analysis and interpretation of literary texts is the concept of prosociality through which it is possible to identify the degree of prosocial orientation in literary texts. A strongly prosocially oriented literary text is an appropriate means for the development of moral literacy.
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The article is about forming literary-critical reception of modern literature for children and youth in Vojvodina (Serbia) after 1945. The analysis of contemporary day-to-day reviews and opinions on books for children contributes to more profound and more detailed summary of the beginnings and the first important impulses in critical reflexion. The authors of the first reviews and opinions were the authors, editors, or pedagogues themselves, for example: A. Čipkár,P. Mučaji, M. Babinka, J. Tušiak and others. Later, some other experts from different areas tried to do this: J. Kmeť – a literary critic and literary historian, M. Myjavcova – a linguist, and, fromyounger generation, M. Demák – a journalist and writer for children. In the 1990’s, some other experts dealt with this issue: Z. Spevák – a pedagogue and writer for children, and, especially, J. Hodoličová – an university professor. Apart from the reviews of books for children and youth, the author in her article also deals with more recent memoirs on this issue by some critics from Vojvodina, and the meetings where the main focus was the creation of literature for children and youth.
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Štefan Krčméry’s (1892 – 1955) wide-ranging interest in art did not concern only literature and music, but also painting and sculpture. In the autumn of 1920, he attended an exposition in the Autumn Salon in Paris about which he informed in an extensive article in the National Newspaper. His aesthetic standpoint was fully determined by the classical perception of the category of the beautiful, which had a negative impact on his aesthetic experience in terms of reception of the modern works. He perceived the modern art as being in the opposition to the tradition, he refused the abstraction, which he did not understand. He stressed the traditionalism, also at the thematic level, and the need of interconnecting the new with the old also in terms of the reflection of the young contemporary Slovak literature. The study refers to S. H. Vajanský’s ideological heritage in Krčméry’s perception of the modern art and literature and its building on such postulates as was the national activism and the emphasis on the positive values, (national) self-confidence, will and optimism, that were characteristic of the supporters of the conservative orientation of the national culture from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
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The paper deals with the relation between the urban and natural/rural environments in contemporary Slovak prose with regard to Slovak literary tradition and reflecting on the current changes of a town as exemplified by texts of three authors M. Kopcsay, M. Kompaník and P. Krištúfek. Slovak literature was dominated by the anti-urban solution to the antinomy of the urban and natural environments – the negative depiction of a town along with idealization of the natural environment, which are still in use. The texts reflect on the transformations of a contemporary town and show that the ideal of natural life is an urban construct to a certain extent, and they challenge the traditional motif of a journey from a town back to the country and thematize the disappearing boundaries between the urban and natural environments by using the motifs of the uncontrolably expanding urban environment, peri-urbanization as well as the motifs of urban wilderness. At the same time, by blending foreign elements the texts employ heterogeneity and ambiguity typical of the urban environment.
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The paper focuses on poetic texts which develop the subject of plurality of inhabited worlds. It continues on the research into the forms of this subject in the European literary tradition and in the new Latin-language tractate literature of Slovak provenance. The beginnings of thematizing plurality of worlds in Slovak poetry in vernacular language date back to the times when the influence of the Enlightenment ideas was at its peak or was still noticeable. The subject is present in a number of passages from Tragoedia by Augustín Doležal, which is undeniably only a fraction of the whole work, however,the idea of plurality of worlds has its significance in the system of teodicea, which was followed by this piece of writing. The subject was introduced into Slovak translation poetry by English poet Alexander Pope´s poem An Essay on Man, translated by Bohuslav Tablic. The paper is based on the assumption that Slovak literature was evolving in the area of poetic reflection in a way similar to those in other Eurepean literatures. It forms parallels with 18th century Russian literary production based on closer interconnections between the works of A. Doležal and Mikhail V. Lomonosov. The conclusions show that the subject is represented by the works of significant Slovak poets from the late 18thand early 19th centuries. The fact that it is part of a more complex ideological system proves strong links with the European intellectual and literary context.
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In this article we focus on the interpretation of three short stories with motive of marriage written by famous Slovak female writer Božena Slančíková Timrava. We are concerned how the main motive of the texts Za koho ísť?, Pozde and Príde čas is presented from different points of view and via different characters. Important feature we found in Timrava’s texts is the picture of people from the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. She captures them together with their inner world, turmoil as well as their hopes and dreams. What is very important is that the inner life of presented characters is usually very different from their outer behavior. We see them in their simple humanness; we observe their attempts to hide from the society as well as their shame, defiance and desire to manipulate others according their own wishes. As one of the ways how to explain their behavior we suggest the Maslow’s theory of the motivation and we are presenting its main points in the theoretical part of our paper. The desire to fulfill one’s needs is very strong in examined texts and we can consider it an underlying driving force of both conscious and unconscious behavior of the characters and it is also the main factor which is creating and moving the story line.
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The author has chosen a non-usual point of view to examine the two short stories indicated in the title. She states her motives by saying that this is the conflict the subject-matters of the novels are built around. She dismembers her message in compliance with the pattern used when writing down people’s healing: she characterizes the specialists of the two strata of healing who also appear in the two writings, describes the protagonists’ diseases and their reasons, the ways the diseases are tried to heal, and the way the protagonists take them. The short story Skon Paľa Ročku also affords her the opportunity to analyse the narrow and wide milieu’s Christian ethics-based attitude to the protagonist’s illness that ends in death.
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In this paper, the author tries to present the relationship between women writers Elena Maróthy- Šoltésová (1855-1938), Terézia Vansová(1857-1942), Božena Slančíková-Timrava (1867-1951), Ľudmila Podjavorinská (1872-1951) and the contemporary literature and society, as well as their contribution to the Slovak culture.
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Religious writings, intimately linked to his occupation of protestant priest, are an integral part of Andrej Sládkovič’s (1820 – 1872) oeuvre. They can be grouped into several genres, including religious reflective and occasional poetry, prayers, sermons and sermon outlines. Up until now, little attention has been paid to sermon outlines which he had been writing since 1847. This article analysed a selection of sermon outlines from the liturgical year 1850 – 1851. The analysis focused on their thematic features. These ranged from theological and dogmatic through occasional and ethical to moralising, formulated mainly from the position of the ethics of moral duty. Social-moral qualities as realised in the relationship of an individual towards another (specific) individual (in familial, marital or friendly context), and towards the human being in general as well as the society, world and humankind (in the form of social-moral qualities such as solidarity, help and charity) are central focal points of these texts.
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In 1846, one of the most important works of Slovak literary Romanticism, Andrej Sládkovič’s (1820 – 1872) long poem Marína was published in the newly-codified Slovak language. Its second edition, which took into account the dynamic development of this young language, played an important role in the publishing tradition of the poem. Sládkovič revised it in cooperation with the editor Karol Viktorin (1822 – 1874) and it was printed in the series Spisy básnické Andreja Sládkoviča [Poetic writings of Andrej Sládkovič]. Since then, several editors attempted at bringing forth their editions of this canonical work. The latest edition was prepared by Cyril Kraus (1928 – 2012) at a time of a rapid development of Slovak textology. The period publishing conditions were also favourable and owing to these, Kraus not only had the largest corpus of sources at his disposal, but could also rely on these relatively developed publishing techniques. His text has become the authoritative source for later editions. The article takes a look at the various editions of Marína and analyses editorial practices used by Jozef Karol Viktorin and Cyril Kraus.
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Christmas Nativity plays had long been a traditional part of Slovak folk theatre. Christmas performances were also popular with amateur theatres in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, Nativity motives also inspired dramatists adhering to the new modernist style. Vladimír Hurban Vladimírov (pseudonym VHV, 1884 – 1950, play Vianoce – Christmas, 1904) and Vladimír Hurban Svetozárov (pseudonym VHS, 1883 – 1949, play Vianoce – Christmas, 1908) pushed the enactment of Christmas ceremonies to the background and concentrated on individual actions and experiences of their heroes. Both texts bear numerous features of period European modernist drama (preference for short dramatic form, character reduction, restricted dialogues, intensified dramatic conflict, communication crisis as a theme). Their innovative – emotionally and morally subversive – handling of Christmas topics employed modernist dramatic techniques and gave the developmental line of biblical, folk and didactic Nativity plays a new dimension. It gave birth to texts of expressively escalated emotional and moral dramas describing family break ups which focus on intimacy rather than on the religious message.
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Margita Figuli (1909 – 1995), one of the leading Slovak women writers of the interwar period, is best known for her acclaimed novel Tri gaštanové kone (Three chestnut horses, 1940). At the time of its publication, her prosaic debut, the less widely popular collection of novellas Pokušenie (Temptation, 1937), also received favourable reviews. The period critics appreciated her ability to express emotionality and thematise the conflicting emotional and physical aspects of love as well as the stylistic qualities of her prose. Not so much attention was paid to the progressive ideological frame in which she focused on the role women played in a period when the society was looking for the meaning of life of the modern human being. Her debut collection presented her vision of the development of women who attempted at embracing their own potential. The texts advocate the value of women in the context of modernising efforts and emancipation movement of the 1930s. The article analyses Figuli’s novellas in the context of her journalism published in the women’s magazine Živena that thematises the “eternal woman” in the new era.
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