Late 18th and Early 19th Century Occasional Poetry From the Perspective of Contemporary Editorial Strategies

Focusing on the late 18th and early 19th occasional poetry, the article discusses the necessity of making accessible to contemporary audiences the works of older Slovak literature. It tackles textological problems such writing poses and addresses issues pertaining to its adequate evaluation from the point of view of literary history. An adequate assessment of the place these texts occupy in the history of the given literature primarily needs to be based on their complex interpretation springing from an intimate knowledge of the text. Making accessible the widest possible corpus of these literary works is therefore an integral part of research of older literature. In 2020, the authors Martin Braxatoris, Ivona Kollarova, Lenka Riskova and Olga Vanekova published the monograph Prilezitost poezie. Miesto a vyznam prilezitostnej poezie Juraja Palkovica, Bohuslava Tablica a Pavla Jozefa Safarika v dejinach slovenskej literatury [Poetry's occasion. The place and role of occasional poetry by Juraj Palkovic, Bohuslav Tablic and Pavel Jozef Safarik in the history of Slovak literature] which, among other things, contains a selection of occasional verse. On the example of this edition, the article describes textological approaches adopted by the authors. Observations outlined in this article wish to inspire future research that would similarly aim at formulating a more exact set of defining principles concerning editorial handling of this type of texts.

Automated summary

This article discusses the necessity of making older Slovak literary works accessible to contemporary audiences, addresses textological problems, and proposes an adequate evaluation method. Using a monograph as an example, the authors describe textological approaches and inspire further research on the editorial handling of this type of texts.