Posmešné ohliadnutie sa za ikonami dlhého 19. storočia
A mocking look back at the icons of the long 19th century

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on a text that has not yet been the object of literary-historical research – the work serialised in 1917 under the title Račkovský rukopis [The Račková manuscript] in the children’s section of the women’s magazine Živena. The anonymous author described it as a “humorous lecture”. The article interprets the text as an acknowledged allusion to Rukopis královédvorský [The Dvůr Králové manuscript], the most famous literary forgery in 19th-century Czech culture, and at the same time – through literary mystification – an innovative continuation of the Kocúrkovo tradition in Slovak literature. It analyses its basic layers (preserved parts of a manuscript fragment from the fictional town of Račková and comments on it by the author, who imitates an academic style) and structural devices (duality and palindrome). The focus is on the reconstruction of the topos of the town of Račková and its inhabitants in Slovak literary tradition through the processing of the anecdotal material ATU 1210 The Cow (Other Domestic Animal) is Taken to the Roof to Graze. The article traces this topos in the text in question and in similar older published cycles of anecdotes (1900, 1884). It shows that the semantic focus in The Račková manuscript lies on the function of the tower derived from the anecdote ATU 1210, which becomes a metaphor for the mentality of the inhabitants of Račková and has an identity-forming function.

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