| 1. | Forms and transformations of the epic in Jozef Mihalkovič’s poetry ** | Using the case of the development of Jozef Mihalkovičʼs poetic output, it is possible to show the influx of epic elements into post-war Slovak poetry and to analyse his selected poems and textual segments from this perspective. This problem will be researched in the years 1958–1970, with the starting point linked to the authorʼs membership in the Trnava Group and the final one related to the publication of his selection of verse Alba, which combines the elements of the poetics of the 1960s with an anticipation of shifts towards the following decade. Elements of the epic are analyzed in relation to contemporary debates about the ʻprosaicisationʼ of poetry, but also to suggestions from more recent literary studies from different cultural contexts, centered on the relationships between literary types, montage, and the application of narratology to the analysis of the poetic world. |
| 2. | Ageing as a theme of Slovak poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries ** | This dissertation will focus on literary representations of themes related to old age and ageing. It will map the dominant thematic and motivic frameworks and their presence in 20th and 21st century Slovak poetry. It will show how the processes of ageing in the sense of physical and psychological transformations are represented in selected poetry collections, and what are the possible forms of ageism. The topic will be reflected from a gender perspective, which will show the affinities and differences of textual realisations in poetry written by women, which brings the so-called female experience, and in the o-called male writing. |
| 3. | Analogies and differences of the Slovak almanac Zora and the Hungarian almanac Aurora in the context of national cultures and literatures of the first half of the 19th century ** | The subject of the research will be a comparison of the Slovak almanac Zora (1835–1840), which was published by the Society of Lovers of Slovak Language and Literature in Czech and Bernolakʼs Slovak, and the Hungarian almanac Aurora (1822–1837). Both almanacs are linked by their place of publication (Buda and Pest), as well as by the similarity of their typography and design. The aim of the dissertation will be to identify, in particular, the analogies and differences in terms of literary genres, thematic focus and literary-aesthetic orientation, in the context of the development of Slovak and Hungarian literature and culture in the first half of the 19th century. |
| 4. | Forming the Identity of Slovak Literature ** | The thesis focuses on the processes of identity formation of Slovak literature in the early modern period. It examines related ideas and constructions of origin, collective identity and mission with regard to their functions in literary communication, as well as the forms and functions of contemporary literature. It considers the linguistic, thematic, thematic-motivic and ideological-aesthetic aspects of literary texts of Slovak provenance in relation to educational and ecclesiastical life in a wider inter-ethnic context. It seeks answers to the question of whether the ethnically informed specificities of literary works correlate with the place of origin of literary works and the ethnicity of the authors. |
| 5. | Motherhood in Slovak literature of the 19th century ** | This thesis will focus on literary representations of motherhood in Slovak literature of the long nineteenth century and explore their engagement with ideological and aesthetic contexts. The methodological starting point will be the analysis of the issue of motherhood in contemporary gender studies, taking into account the contemporary social and historical context. The research focuses on the forms of motherhood in literary texts realized in different literary poetics, their ideological background, as well as the gender perspective applied. |
| 6. | Nature in modernism; Prerequiste: French, English ** | The aim of the thesis is to explore the cultural function of nature in Slovak literature (with a time frame of 1890-1925, in the poetological line of naturalism - symbolism - modernism), the environmental consciousness of modernist literature and its reactions to contemporary changes in the relationship between man and nature (industrialisation, war). The methodological starting point will be the theories of ecocriticism and especially ecopoetics (écopoetique, écrire la natur/writing nature) applied to the study of modernism. Research will focus on representations of nature (modernist imagination of nature, modernist sensibility to nature) and their relation to religion, myth, ethical problems, categories of time and space, and the genre register. |
| 7. | Normalisation prose – a prose written at the time of normalisation ** | The dissertation is oriented on the research of the influence of social conditions on the genre, poetological, thematic-motivic, ideological and value profile of Slovak prose of the period of normalization (1969–1989). The material basis are works accessible in the public space controlled by official structures. The starting point is the assumption that it is possible to distinguish works that meet the official demands of political normalization ("normalization prose") from works that are resistant to varying degrees to external pressures ("prose of the normalization period"). |
| 8. | Mila Haugová’s poetry in the new millennium ** | M. Haugová is a key author in the canon of modern Slovak literature and also the most translated Slovak poet and author of poetry translations (S. Plath, P. Celan, G. Trakl, I. Bachmann, S. Kirsch, J. Wright, A. Sexton and others). In her poetry collections, she mainly follows the so-called confessional poetry, experimental writing in the modernist and postmodern line of unconventional poetry and 20th century philosophy. The dissertation will focus on her post-2000 poetic output, with the intention of capturing its developmental tendencies through categories such as spirituality, erotic motifs, transformations of the lyric heroine, forms and sources of intertextuality, diariness, fragment, and so on. Because of its relations with non-national poetry, the thesis makes room for penetrations to the comparatistics and translatology of the fictional text. |
| 9. | Reflection of minority status in contemporary Slovak prose ** | The theoretical and interdisciplinary approach of the thesis will elaborate the issue of minorities in literature, taking into account the Slovak cultural and social context after 1989. In the analytical-interpretive part, the research will focus on specific authors and individual types of minority (ethnic, linguistic, /sub/cultural, sexual, etc.) and the relations between them on the basis of the interpretation of selected literary works. |
