Generation 1822 in cultural memory

Abstract

In the context of memory studies, literary texts can be understood as media of collective memory; through selection, reconstruction, and updating of chosen topoi, images, or personalities, they perform such functions as forming the understanding of the past, transfer of historical images, construction of memory relations, or reflection of the processes and problems of collective memory. In this sense, literature forms collective images of the development and meaning of past events, eminent personalities of the past, interprets the present, and projects the future. Moreover, for an understanding of the symbolic meaning of the elements for which Pierre Nora coined the term “places of memory” and Jan Assmann conceptualised as “figures of memory”, processes of reception and context are also crucial. This theoretical background also determines the approach to literary and literary-journalistic texts related to representatives of Slovak literary Romanticism born in 1822 (Ján Francisci, Janko Kráľ, Ján Kalinčiak, Ján Palárik, Štefan Marko Daxner, and Peter Michal Bohúň) and, in the case of Andrej Sládkovič, in 1820. This group formed a strong national revivalist generation whose literary representations provide all three types of collective memory identified by J. Assmann: communicative, cultural, and political.

Keywords

• cultural memory
• literary memory
• slovak literary romanticism
• literary representations
• generation