Slovenska Literatura (Jun 2020)
The Forms of the Urban and Natural Environmens in the Proses of Márius Kopcsay, Monika Kompaníková and Peter Krištúfek
Abstract
The paper deals with the relation between the urban and natural/rural environments in contemporary Slovak prose with regard to Slovak literary tradition and reflecting on the current changes of a town as exemplified by texts of three authors M. Kopcsay, M.Kompaník andP. Krištúfek. Slovak literature was dominated by the anti-urban solution to the antinomy of the urban and natural environments – the negative depiction of a town along with idealization of the natural environment, which are still in use. The texts reflect on the transformations of a contemporary town and show that the ideal of natural life is an urban construct to a certain extent, and they challenge the traditional motif of a journey from a town back to the country and thematize the disappearing boundaries between the urban and natural environments by using the motifs of the uncontrolably expanding urban environment, peri-urbanization as well as the motifs of urban wilderness. At the same time, by blending foreign elements the texts employ heterogeneity and ambiguity typical of the urban environment.
