KONŠTRUOVANIE LÍNIÍ (SITUÁCIA A FUNKCIE LITERÁRNEJ KRITIKY NA PRELOME ŠTYRIDSIATYCH A PÄŤDESIATYCH ROKOV 20. STOROČIA)

• Authors: René Bílik

Title variants

EN

Constructing the lines (situation and function of the literary criticism at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s)

• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The author examines the situation and function of the literary criticism at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s. Within this context, he is polemical in his reflection on the methods of literary historiography, which marginalize the period in question as a period of „political mistakes“, „childhood diseases of socialism“ or unintentional political excesses. A significant part of the domestic literary historiography uses a self-given contemporary label to designate the literary aspect of the marginalization process as „schematism“ (originated in 1952). The author points to the fact that these kind of historiographical interpretations are found within the methodological framework of historical materialism. It also enables them to construct the history of modern Slovak literature as a linear and continuous movement. In comparison with them it stands a part of literary historiography which tracks the history of Slovak literature in the 20th century as a series of discontinuous shifts of the dominant aesthetic units (O. Čepan). Against this methodological background, the author follows the changes of the criteria which in the activities of literary criticism helped establish the primary values of the new political power at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s that is the doctrine of socialist realism. A reflection based on such facts allowed the author to show that the period of the late 40s and early 50s is one of the key turning points in the history of Slovak literature in the 20th century. It is the core which supplied energy to the totalitarian patterns, which Slovak literature was trapped in for forty years.

Keywords

EN

LITERARY CRITICISM; 1950S; 1940S; SOCIALIST REALISM; HISTORIOGRAPHY; SLOVAKIA; SLOVAK LITERATURE

• Publisher: Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovenská literatúra (Slovak Literature)
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 59
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1 – 16

Contributors

author

René Bílik

• Ústav slovenskej literatúry SAV, Konventná 13, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovak Republic