Central Europe as a comparative issue: potentialities and approaches

Miloš Zelenka

IN: Partitúra Irodalomtudományi folyóirat, Volume: XII. , Issue 1, 2017, p. 3-16., ISSN 1336-7307

DOI: 10.17846/PA.2017.12.1.3-16

Abstract:

The paper focuses on defining Central Europe in terms of literary scholarship in view of the fact that Central Europe as a cultural and geographical area, or crossroads of the West and the East, evidences a changeable position of unstable centres, jointly with mingling ethnoses, cultures and religions. The territorial precept of mutual “tangibility” prompted more intense communication and exchange of literary values, bringing about understanding as well as clashes of artistic traditions and poetics, standards and conventions. Whereas minimalist concepts use binary oppositions (we x they; our x foreign; centre x periphery, etc.), which render this area as a specific region of small Slavonic and non-Slavonic nations between Germany and Russia, maximalist concepts are mainly axiological, viewing Central Europe as a complex of time-honoured ideas interconnected with the tradition of Latin Christianity. Hence the issues related to the literary study of Central European area concern enquiry into its ideologems, whether they can be examined at the level of genre, poetics and style, i.e. in literary structures proper. Some literary theoreticians presume that the Central European nature of interpoetical artefacts (such as certain timeless cultural models and constants) can be decoded in Central European variety of burlesque, irony, satire, cabaret, or post-modern fiction. Additionally, the paper summarises conforming and differing concepts of Central Europe in Slovak, Czech, Polish and Hungarian literary scholarship

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Partitúra is a Hungarian literary journal published in Slovakia twice a year. The first edition was issued in 2006. From 2007 to 2014 its publishers were the Faculty of Central European Studies at The Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra in cooperation with Sambucus Literary Society. Since 2014 the Faculty of Central European Studies at the CPU in Nitra became the sole publisher.

The journal releases peer-reviewed scientific articles, literary studies and art reviews of both Hungarian as well as world literature. It is also a forum for essays on several other arts and intercultural relations. Furthermore, special attention is devoted to the Central European literature and literary studies; the magazine not only publishes the reviews of such studies, but also provides the arena for reflections about them. The journal aims to give an account of the contemporary Hungarian literature of the Hungarian minorities as well as to serve as a cluster for discourses.

As for the structure of the paper, it is usually divided into three main sections. The first part generally deals with the translation of an important foreign abstract literary study. It is followed by the heading of Scientific Studies and the Columns of Critical Analysis. Partitúra regularly publishes thematic abstracts by authors, genres, as well as a literary and artistic phenomenon in focus.