The contemporary Slovak historical novel and its search for the present

Břetislav Truhlář

pp. 108-113

in: Robert B. Pynsent (ed), Modern Slovak prose, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstract

Gradually the Slovak historical novel has overcome the period of idealisation and didacticism which dominated the nineteenth century: it has overcome sheer descriptiveness. Those nineteenth-century works which made an attempt at a serious explication of historical events have retained their vigour to this day, for example, the works of Jozef Miloslav Hurban (1817–88), Ján Kalinčiak, and later of Jégé (1866–1940), Terézia Vansová (1857–1942), Jozef Cíger Hronský or L"udo Zúbek (1907–69). Recently Ján čajak's novel V zajatí na Holíčskom hrade (A prisoner in Holíč castle, 1968) has become a model; it develops the social significance of an historical period and puts Slovak history into its international context. In this novel čajak fulfilled much of what is now demanded of an historical novel and it has come to be regarded in many ways as the precursory example of the "historical materialist" approach to an historical theme.