| 1. | The prose of the Catholic Modern School ** | Slovak Catholic Modern School is primarily a poetic phenomenon. A marginal, though not insignificant, part of the work of some poets of Catholic Modern School was also prose. The aim of this dissertation is to map prosaic texts of selected authors of Catholic Modern School and to place them in the relevant contexts and developmental tendencies of the 20th century prose (the issues of autobiography, the disintegration of the sujet, the anti-novel and the phenomenon of a Catholic novel). In particular, it will examine prosaic works of R. Dilong, J. Silan, M. Šprinc and other authors of Catholic Modern School. |
| 2. | Urban and rural spaces in novels from the first half of the 1930s ** | The dichotomy between the urban and rural spaces represents one of the most frequently researched problems in Avant-garde and Modernism studies. The theme of the dissertation explores the relations between the urban and rural spaces in novels from the early- to mid-1930s, i.e. in works of writers with different ideological background and different poetics, such as L. Nádaši-Jégé, J. Jesenský, J. Cíger-Hronský, M. Urban, P. Jilemnický and others. The goal of the dissertation is to research specific approaches to the portrayal of city and village (possibly also of nature and folklore elements) in novels from the first half of the 1930s, and to show the complex and ambivalent relation to the tradition and modernization in Slovak culture of this period. |
| 3 | Poetics of Catholic spiritual poetry of the 18th and 19th centuries ** | The poetics of Juraj Pavlín Bajan (1721–1792), a significant figure of Slovak Catholic poetry of the 18th century, its contemporary literary-historical and poeological context, references to the sources of this poetic tradition in the 17th century, such as Ján Abrahamffy’s Knižka modliteb nábožných (The Book of Religious Prayers, 1693), as well as the overlaps of the tradition of Catholic spiritual songs into the 19th century, i. e. Ján Hollý‘s Katoľícki spevňík (Catholic Hymnal, 1842, 1846), and into the 20th century [Jednotný katolícky spevník, (General Catholic Hymnal)]. |
| 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. |
