Slovenska Literatura (Feb 1999)
Classicist - preromantic - romantic?
Abstract
The Article „Neo-Classicist - Pre-Romanticist - Romanticist“ with the title „The Issue of Style-Ty pological Classification of the Poetical Works by Ján Kollár in Czech and Slovak Literary History" deals with methodological analysis of Czech and Slovak literary historiography analysing the poetry of Ján Kollár. It brings forth an evidence about a comparatively great disproportionality in the issues of its classification to the parti cular literary streams in the first half of the 19th century, starting from positivistically oriented literary history (Josef Vlček, Pavel Bujnák), regarding Kolláfs poetry as an expression of Romanticism, through the post-World War 1 literary history (Arne Novák, Vojtěch Jirát, Mikuláš Bakoš), conceiving these works as a product of Neo-Classicism, and finally post-war and contemporary literary criticism (František Vodička, Milan Pišút, Stanislav Smatlák, Cyril Kraus, and Vladimir Macura) who in these issues oscillates between its classification as Neo-Classicism (especially Slovak literary history) and as Pre-Romanticism (mostly Czech literary history). As a way out of these disproportions it is suggested accepting the thesis on syncretism of literary streams of the first half of the 19th century in Slovak literature which can be shown in the Kollár's works connecting the older Neo-Classistic tendencies with newer Pre-Romantic impulses.
