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Contextualization of a Literary Work |
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Mária Bátorová |
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| The research on contextualization of a literary work deals primarily with new reading of home and selected world literature, i. e. reading after the year 1989, when the conditions for free thought were favorable. Eventual interpretations put emphasis on inner-meaning structure of literary works and include also their anthropological and psychological aspect. The interdisciplinary view is an important issue in all the process of research. Thus the proposed method of contextualization starts with the literary work itself, moving the attention to the category of author, his individual perception of the world and reality and finaly to the milieu or society where the author lives and writes his works. This is connected with the following reception of the work of art or with its absence, as well as with its influence. |
In the middle of the nineties there was an important work in Slovak Slavistic theory, Theory of Interliterary Process (1995) by D. Ļurišin, which offers a compact conception of inerliterary research, determined by the systematic interliterary studies. Ļurišin's works, with their open and sophisticated formulations, create conditions for unique, self-reliant and subjective approach to a specific field of research. This is legitimized by the substantial published material and many cited works of secondary literature. Of all Ļurišin's work the most instructive for our research is the category of typological context, which is viewed by the theorist as the basis of interliterary process. In our approach to the work of art and its contextualization the proposed method consists of the research of particular authors and their works in their particular literatures, meanwile the method of D. Ļurišin focuses on macro-structures and theoretical interliterary relations. He choice of authors is not coincidental, for they are part of theoretical paradigm of modernism. He basic unit of analysis is thus the work of art and its creator. This analysis results in meanings, topics, motives, and adaptations on the basis of which the work of art is contextualized and which create the network of relations in the field of possibilities. A good example of this is a particular phenomenon, a writer, painter and businessman Hronský, who represents a complex of relations (the anthropological and psychological aspect), topics (the existential issues from the beginning of the 20th century), and techniques (self-reflection, lyrization). |
The time scope of the research is the period of classic modern, a concept that arose in fields of research different than the literary science, which makes the modern plausible to be a subject matter of these. This methodological approach may be legitimiyed by the simple fact that the modern as a newromantic style is anchored in human identity as an individual creative subject. The anthropolgy developed and tries to adopt new categories of thinking, "Verstehende Soziologie" ("the understanding sociology"), whose fourth line leads from fenomenology to the lingvistic philosophy or to the linguistic in Peter Winch's work (resulting from late Wittgenstein), and also to the hermeneutical approach (reactivated by H. Gadamer through M. Heidegger) whose sociological views were later developed by J. Habermas or P. Ricoeur. The latter two are instructively incorporated into the research. P. Bourdieu, dealing with M. Foucault's theories of "symbolic structuralism" and "a field of strategic possibilities",establishes "field approach" which claims that "the intelectual universes are social microcosms with their own structure and rules", and at the same time he introduces the notion of "space of possibilities". Having realized the severe simplification of the problem, P. Bourdieu says: "authors, including scientists, schools, magazines, etc. exist only throughout the distinctions that differ them". He uses Benvenista's formulation: "To differ and to designate is one and the same thing." |
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Finally we want to emphasise the possibility to characterize this method, by placing it within the framework of deconstructive comparative methods. This brings it to the opposition to the artificially created, mechanically used and misused scientific terminology and techniques. The relations in literary science have been constructed for years and decades and it is necessary to take a closer look at them from time to time, deconstruct them and then rejoin them again, creating new working hypothesis. Thus the results of this research on the problem of contextualization of a literary work create a new and unexplored network of similarities and meanings in the field or space of possibilities, incorporating many analysis of Slovak lietarary creations. This is based on natural historical and personal development and mainly on the new network of relations among the literary works. Meanings and motives in the known and less known works of world literature, showed developmental similarities and differences in Slovak literary modern. |
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Keywords: Modernism in Literature. Comparation. Interdisciplinary Approach. Structure of Meaning in a Literary Work. Anthropological and Psychological Aspect. Deconstructive Comparative Method. |