„Destruction of the Concept of Socialist Realism" (on the „Magic Realism" case in Romboid in 1987)

Abstract

The goal of the present case study is to help understand the mechanisms used by the official Communist power to control and regulate literary critical production in Slovak literature written in the late 1980s. The author reconstructs a case from the year 1987, which concerns the magazine Romboid. He uses the particular case of contemporary literary life to show that Slovak literature in the late 1980s also featured strong dogmatic and conservative trends persisting in rigid defense of Socialist Realism as the only artistic method acceptable at that time.

Keywords

• literary criticism
• socialist realism
• magic realism
• normalization