Literature – City – Bratislava (After 1918): State of the Art and Selected Contexts

Abstract

At the turn of the 21st century, the spatial turn that took place in various fields of humanities and social sciences could also be observed in literary studies. On the international level, research was inspired by topics and theories from such fields as architecture, urban studies, sociology or anthropology. Slovak literary studies, however, has not been significantly inspired by geopoetics and has not devoted systematic attention to the study of urban locations and motives. This article provides a basic overview of existing research into the representations of urban settings in Slovak literature. It maps topics and methodological background of individual research initiatives with a special focus on literary and artistic representations of Bratislava. The paper also outlines new lines of inquiry, such as the relationship between literary representations of the city in the post-socialist Central Europe and the phenomenon of nostalgia. It also suggests the possibilities of comparative research. With regards to the latter, the author argues that juxtaposing literary representations of Bratislava with representations of urban settings in the literatures of other European “small nations” (Miroslav Hroch) offers more fruitful ground for research than searching for similarities in culturally and geographically closer Hungarian or Czech literature. The article also provides a list of selected literature on the problematics of urban representations in Slovak literature and culture.

Keywords

• literature
• city
• bratislava
• spatial turn
• urban studies
• geopoetics