Ad fontes (Revízia jedného biografického hesla)
Ad fontes (Revision of a biographical entry)

Summary/Abstract: The article assesses the reception of the life and work of Amália Sirotková (1813 – 1892), the first known Slovak woman collector of fairy tales whose collection of tales has been preserved in manuscript form. The paper points to significant discrepancies between information on A. Sirotková and her tales published in literature and facts based on available source materials. The author rigorously analyses the conclusions of researchers who wrote about A. Sirotková (Bohumil Haluzický, 1952; Karel Horálek, 1989), information included in Ľudovít V. Rizner’s Bibliografia slovenského písomníctva ([Bibliography of Slovak literature], 1933), and the biographical entry on A. Sirotková in Slovenský biografický slovník ([Slovak biographical dictionary], 1993). The article revises the facts provided in these references in the context of the research of fairy tales in the 19th century. The aim of the article is to accentuate the necessity to work with primary sources which help avoid drawing conclusions based on nonfactual links. Such imprecisions occur especially when it comes to marginally known personalities with very few references in literature and result in a distorted literary-historical portrait which does not correspond to the facts.

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