Within the genre range of Slovak Baroque literature there has appeared to be a less known genre called apologue. It happened in the work titled Apologorum moralium libri VI (Trnava, 1747, 1752) by Konštantín Halapi (1698 – 1752). Apologue can be translated as a fable. The fable is also referred to in many titles of the texts in the collection. Fables appear in Slovak Baroque literature as parts of sermons fulfilling the function of exemplums as well as parts of manuscript almanacs of folk and semi-folk literature. In both cases the target reader was a simple individual. Halapi´s apologues are different in many ways; the Latin language and quantitative metre suggest that these apologues are meant for advanced readers, and are not used as exemplums. The author offers them as autonomous works of art. The paper offers a brief overview of the historical development of fable as a genre and apologue as a concept in the context of Ancient and neo-Latin literature. The analysis of Halapi´s collection, where the poet offers his own view of apologue as a genre, is used to examine how the genre was perceived in the context of the contemporary literature. Halapi highlights the didactic function of literature and the persuasive potential of aesthetically valuable allegorical short stories. He freely admits their unconcealed fictitiousness as the „invented things“ in the stories serve the truth and education.
Ján Kalinčiak (1822 – 1871) wrote his poem “Králik [The wren]” (1840) early in his career. The poem connects two different thematic and generic components – the allegorical and satirical social poem depicting the course of elections and the genre of the etymological fable which explains the origin of a name of a bird. In trying to identify the possible starting points of the two thematic layers, it turns out that the allegorical connection of the bird parliament with the portrayal of elections in Hungary had appeared in the unpublished satirical dramatic dialogue by the Hungarian author Ádám Pálóczi Horváth (1760 – 1820), “Az üstökös csillag befolyása a madár társadalom éghajlatára” ([The influence of the comet on the climate of the bird society] 1819). The dialogue described the course of the 1819 election in Zala County. The article traces common elements in the texts of the two authors. Kalinčiak’s poetic treatment of the story of the eagle and the wren suggests its double interpretation: it is both a moralising fable about the victory of the weak over the strong and an etymological fable about the origin of the name of a small bird.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.