Annotations

Probes into Slovak Prose of the 1950s–1970s from the Perspective of Ecocriticism

The dissertation, situated in the field of historical poetics, is focuses on a selective analysis of Slovak prose from the 1950s to the 1970s from the point of view of ecocriticism. It will examine prose texts in which it is possible to demonstrate a relationship between socialist realism – as a prescribed method and poetics in various periods and modifications (from the establishment of the regime, through subsequent liberalization, to the normalization relapse) – and issues of ecology and the environment. The dissertation will explore how ideological frameworks shaped representations of the connections between humans and nature and of human environmental interventions in the landscape. Its aim is to identify changing tensions between utilitarian and ethical conceptions of nature, as well as the axiological aspects of environmental discourse in literature. The theoretical background will reflect the current state of knowledge in international literary criticism.

The dissertation will focus on research into national discourse in literary thinking during the so-called long 19th century, beginning with proto-literary-historical texts from the late 18th century and ending with positivist literary history at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to literary-historical texts, the research will also focus on contemporary literary criticism and texts with a literary-aesthetic focus. The dissertation will focus on mapping the process of gradual transformation of older types of identities (confessional, regional, class-based) into a newer national type and its forms (the concept of a unified Czecho-Slovak and independent Slovak literature, the vision of Slavic literature), against the backdrop of changes in theoretical and methodological frameworks (Enlightenment narratives, the reflection of the so-called Herderian revolution in the Slovak environment, the Romantic concept of science, Herbartian aesthetics, positivism). A key issue will also be the conflict between national discourse and efforts to reflect on literature as an autonomous component of art and culture in its primary aesthetic function.

The thesis will be based on the knowledge of the interrelation between narrative structures and collective identities. It will focus on selected works of early Slovak literature that served to defend and assert national and confessional (or other) collective identities. It will examine literary constructions of the origins, character and mission of a given community. Against the background of contemporary rhetorical theory, genre typology and the poetics of myth, the aim is to identify the literary strategies and practices that were used to defend and prove the legitimacy of the community and to praise its origins, significance and role

The motif of death is one of the dominant elements in the literary production of the older periods of development. Death is one of the most important moments in human existence, both religiously and psychologically, and its literary reflection is therefore a valuable source of knowledge about the way people think in different historical periods and stages of their lives. At the same time, the functional, genre and poetic syncretism of older literary monuments makes it possible to trace different ways of dealing with them, depending on the time of their creation or their attachment to particular aesthetic/poetic systems, but also on their genre classification, function or authorial intention. The aim of the research is to map the literary representation of this phenomenon and to trace its transformations in the literary-historical development from the earliest times to the beginning of the 19th century

Motherhood in 19th century Slovak literature

The dissertation will focus on literary representations of motherhood in late 19th-century Slovak literature and their integration into ideological and aesthetic contexts. The methodological starting point will be the analysis of the theme of motherhood in contemporary gender studies, taking into account the contemporary socio-historical situation. The research will focus on the forms of motherhood in literary texts realised in different literary poetics, their ideological background as well as the gender perspective applied.

Urbanisation, industrialisation, war, and new communication technologies significantly influenced the acoustic environment of the modernist era. Modernist literary texts become places of representation of sounds and cultural noise generation. Methodologically oriented towards sound studies, this dissertation will examine the modernist meanings of various acoustic elements in works of Slovak literature from the first third of the 20th century and attempt to define their soundscape

The aim of this dissertation is to examine and analyze the specific role of writers – intellectuals in various social roles in a given historical context. The thesis also includes a reflection on contemporary ideas about the role of writers in society. The research focuses on a specific Slovak author and their work. It is based on the assumption that creators are not only authors of literary texts, but also participants in public life. At the same time, they are part of cultural and social memory. The material basis of the work consists of literary works, autobiographical genres, and cultural periodicals.

The Representation of Reality in Modernism

The research themes of the dissertation focus on the following areas: 1. the peculiarities of the modeling of the fictional world and the representation of reality in modernist texts (in contrast, for example, to the literary trend of realism); 2. the world as a psychic projection of the subject and the resulting implications for the construction of the fictional world: the persistent and uncertain character of reality, frequent motifs of hallucinations, dreams, penetration into another (sometimes transcendent) reality; 3. the problems of the representation of the literary subject and modernist themes: problems of the individual, mortal love, melancholy. It is also possible to choose a monograph on the work of one author, for example, Ivan Minárik, or to analyze selected texts by several authors.

 The project will focus on research into interwar essays and reportage as literary genres that helped shape contemporary political and cultural discourses, mainly social and national ones. In addition to canonical authors (e.g. L. Novomeský, M. Chorváth, A. Matuška) and periodicals that have already been the subject of scholarly research (e.g. DAV), the research will concentrate on texts published in less explored periodicals of the First Czechoslovak Republic (e.g. Ročenka slovenskej chudoby, Proletárka). 

The dissertation aims to reflect on the effects of the social changes that took place in Czechoslovakia at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, i.e. to examine the impact of the external social conditions of the following two decades on the genre, poetological, thematic, and motivic, but above all on the ideological and value profile of Slovak prose of the normalization period. The field of research will be defined by prose works accessible in the contemporary public communicative space controlled by official structures.

The doctoral dissertation focuses on the study of queer literature in Slovakia from the perspective of literary studies and periodical studies, with particular emphasis on the journals Aspekt, Glosolália, and QYS. It analyzes these periodicals as platforms that have shaped queer discourse, authorship, and readership communities. The project draws theoretically on queer studies as a critical methodology (Sedgwick 1990; Butler 1990; Halberstam 2011) and methodologically combines microhistorical, relational, and data-oriented approaches.