Crisis – decay – plurality. On Oskar Čepan’s research of post-Romanticism Cover Image

Kríza – rozklad – pluralita. K výskumu postromantizmu Oskára Čepana
Crisis – decay – plurality. On Oskar Čepan’s research of post-Romanticism

Author(s): Eva Palkovičová
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, History of ideas, Comparative Study of Literature, Slovak Literature, 19th Century, Theory of Literature
Published by: SAV - Slovenská akadémia vied - Ústav slovenskej literatúry SAV
Keywords: Oskar Čepan; post-Romanticism; Romanticism; Marxist literary studies; structuralism

Summary/Abstract: The literary scholar Oskár Čepan (1925–1992) devoted himself for many years to the study of post-Romanticism in Slovak literature, both as a literary historian and as an editor. The culmination of his research was the comprehensive chapter “The Decline of Romanticism” in the third volume of the History of Slovak Literature (1965), charting literary life from the end of the 1848–49 revolution to around 1875. In the 1970s, when Čepan began to develop the concept of a pluralistic model of 19th-century Slovak literature, he shifted his focus to the work of the Slovak Romantic generation, and thus did not revise his views on the work of authors from the second half of the 19th century. Post-Romantic literature has remained, in Slovak literary historiography, a period perceived as a transition between Romanticism and Realism, a crisis of Romantic ideas and of literary texts of little value. This paper analyses Čepan’s approach to post-Romanticism in the chapter in question, highlights its problematic aspects, and assesses the relevance of the author’s ideas for current research into 19th-century Slovak literature.

  • Issue Year: 73/2026
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 105-115
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Slovak
Toggle Accessibility Mode