Based on the analysis of two period newspaper articles published in 1846, the contribution provides a glimpse into the shaping of the position of women in society during Romanticism with a special accent on women’s involvement in the national movement. The Protestant priest Štefan Václav Homola (1820 – 1881) published an article addressing girls’ and women’s education in Slovak entitled Ústavy pre vychovávanie dievčat [Institutions for girls’ education]. His text triggered a response from Johana Miloslava Lehocká (1810 – 1849), a published poet and wife of a Protestant priest from Liptovský Trnovec. Period intellectuals aimed at “awakening” the women and elevating them from the low “matter” to the higher level of national “spirit,” but they were primarily concerned with the interests of the national movement, not with women’s education. J. Lehocká accentuated the necessity of educating women and the need for professional training of Slovak women teachers. In her article, Lehocká – in line with period understanding of the function of the woman in society – interpreted the role of women in the Romantic national project as a duty. At the same time, however, she described various limitations that impeded women from self-realization.
The Ottoman invasions are among the most significant historical events in Central European literature as well as popular culture. An important example is the legendary „well of love“ at Trenčín Castle, supposedly dug by the Turkish Omar in order to free his beloved Fatima, held in captivity by Stephen Zápolya. Despite its setting in the 1490s, this story was first published in German in the early nineteenth century by Hungarian nobleman Alois Freiherrn von Mednyánszky, which inspired Slovak poetic adaptations of this tale by Karol Štúr (1844) and Mikuláš Dohnány (1846). The narrative was popularized in several collections of „historical“ tales set in Slovakia’s castles by twentieth-century authors such as Ľudovít Janota, Jozef Branecký, Jozef Horák and Ján Domasta, as well as in Jozef Nižnánsky’s historical novel The Well of Love (1935), which provides a concrete political background for the legend. Although the story’s events and characters (other than Zápolya) are fictional, it remains today one of the most enduring love stories in Slovak culture. This article will analyse the textual development of this legend in relation to evolving definitions of national identity over the last two centuries.
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