„ROMÁN BEZ HRDINU“ LADISLAVA NÁDAŠIHO JÉGÉHO

• Authors: Taranenková Ivana

Title variants

EN

„A novel without hero“ by Ladislav Nádaši Jégé

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The study focuses on the work of Slovak writer Ladislav Nádaši Jégé (1844 – 1940) who published his writings in the 1880s but then broke off his literary carrier until the 1920s. As a young aspiring author, Nádaši showed an exceptional overview of the West European literature and culture that was rare among his contemporaries oriented towards Russian literature. Contemporary literary critics as well as later Slovak literary historians saw a link between Jégé´s writing of the 1920s and 1930s and the naturalism of Emile Zola. They arrived at this conclusion because of an article about Zola, which Nádaši published in 1891, in which he had argued against the widespread image of the French writer in Slovak cultural circles. Slovak intellectuals of the last decades of the19th century regarded Zola and his literary method of naturalism as amoral and vulgar. This study explores broader links of Ladislav Nádaši Jégé’s literary texts with the tradition of European literature and culture that cannot be reduced to the influence of a single poetics or author. In 1889, Nádaši published the novelette Výhody spoločenského života (The Benefits of Social Life), a satirical work with the subtitle “Another Story without Hero”, in reference to the novel Vanity Fair by English writer William Makepeace Thackeray. Several elements of Thackeray´s novel can be identified not only in Nádaši ´s novelette but also in his later works. This aspect hasn’t been considered in earlier analyses of his texts in Slovak literary history. Jégé´s novel Cesta životom (The Journey Through Life) published in 1930 tells the story of a renegade who denies his origins to climb the social ladder of the amoral and corrupt society at the end of the 19th century. The novel depicts the tension of national attitude in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy – the subject of many novels of the 19th century Slovak literature – from the perspective of a conformist antihero. In this novel, Nádaši Jégé also used literary archetypes as well as features of the European long literary tradition. They include elements of the picaresque novel and characters related to the literary archetypes of Falstaff and Don Juan. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his reflections on the human nature also feature occasionally. The literary works of Nádaši Jége are not just the result of his appropriation of the 19th century naturalism; they include many elements of the European cultural tradition that were not frequently present in the works of his contemporaries.

Keywords

EN

JÉGÉ LADISLAV NÁDAŠI; EUROPEAN NOVEL; LITERARY ARCHETYPES; LITERARY TRADITION

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 66
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 258 – 273

Contributors

author

Taranenková Ivana

• Ústav slovenskej literatúry SAV, Dúbravská cesta 9, 841 04 Bratislava, Slovak Republic