Honest shepherd case (Forms, possibilities and reception of romantic prose examplified on Štefan Marko Daxner’s text)

Abstract

The article analyses Štefan Marko Daxner´s short prose called Statočný valach (Honest shepherd, 1843, in manuscript titled O drahom barancovi, Of an expensive ram), in which the writer used and creatively adjusted the narrative techniques and language typical of humorous folk genres. The prose proves interesting with regard to two different assessments made by both contemporaries and literary historians, which was caused by a type of print media it was published in. It was assessed as an original prose (Jozef Miloslav Hurban and Július Noge) as it had been published in almanac Nitra (1846) as well as a folk tale (Pavol Dobšinský and Cyril Kraus) as it had been published in Prostonárodné slovenské povesti (1883). The two different ways of receiving the prose conditioned by the criteria of literary experience are used to show there is a long-standing problem of the assessment of the literary works which are found somewhere between literature and folklore.

Keywords

• romanticism
• prose
• folk tale
• adaption
• narrative techniques