Stereotypes and Myths. Intertextuality in Central European Imagological Reflections

Introduction: From Intertextuality to Imagology

More than half a century has passed since the official establishment of the Cabinet of Literary Communication at the University of Education (currently Constantine the Philosopher University) in Nitra, though its beginnings date back to the Prague Spring of 1968. The workplace was founded to approach the interpretation of literary texts in literary theory innovatively, with a potential impact on school practice. The research provided new theoretical stimuli for working with literary texts from the very beginning. The pioneering work of Slovak literary scholars also found response in foreign circles, and soon, thanks to the innovation applied in the analysis of specific literary texts, it took the name Nitra School. It gradually elaborated terminologically and semantically the expression theory of the text, which it interdisciplinarily enriched with diachronic and comparative aspects of not only primary but also secondary communication respecting semiotic-reception approaches. The research was stimulated mainly by information theory and communication theory as the most modern methods in social sciences at the time.

The research carried out in Nitra was not isolated from world events. The Nitra School was in close contact with the Tartu School, headed by Juri Lotman (1922–1993). In the first phase of the research, František Miko (1920–2010), an important figure in Czecho-Slovak and European literature, played a major role. Proceedings entitled O interpretácii umeleckého textu [On the Interpretation of Artistic Text] contained detailed analyses of literary texts, with a total of twenty-seven published volumes. In the second stage, in the late 1970s, there was a shift from the theory of translation to the theory of metatexts, and its leading representative was Anton Popovič (1933–1984). This extraordinary personality, who through his mentor, the structurally oriented Czech Slavist and member of the Prague Linguistic Circle Frank Wollman (1888–1969), built on the classical legacy of Czechoslovak structuralism of the interwar period, has remained permanently inscribed in the annals of the history of Slovak literary scholarship as its best manager to date, as a personality with a tremendous feeling for paving the way for the path of Slovak scholarship both in Europe and in the world. In the early 1970s, Anton Popovič became more and more oriented towards Nitra, and finally, in 1973, he moved to the Faculty of Education in Nitra. However, in 1969 he completed a more extended working stay in the Netherlands with James S. Holmes. This stay greatly influenced his further scientific work, especially in ←7 | 8→translation theory. Popovič’s Hungarian circles helped him participate in the VII World Congress of the International Comparative Literature (AILC/ ICLA), held in 1973 in the Canadian cities of Ottawa and Montreal. The programme was prepared under the direction of Hungarian literary scholars, headed by István Sőtér, and thanks to them, he was also able to attend this conference where he was elected a member of the executive committee of the AILC/ICLA. In 1975, at the conference in Budmerice, Slovakia, he was also elected chairman of the standing commission on translation theory. When Popovič was chairman of the Translation Commission of the International Comparative Literature Association, Imre Dénes was one of its two secretaries (the other was the Belgian Raymond van den Broeck). He, too, showed a noticeable shift at that time towards research on metatextual theory. In 1980, he submitted his doctoral thesis entitled Adaptácia literárnych textov a literárne vzdelanie [Adaptation of Literary Texts and Literary Education], which he successfully defended. It originally developed the theory of metatexts because Dénes could also rely on foreign literature, as he had studied Spanish alongside English at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University, was of Hungarian origin and was conversant in other languages as well. However, after defending his dissertation in 1982, Imre Dénes emigrated with his family and settled in Rennes, apparently learning French in a short time and working at the university. He taught until 2002, and since then, he has published one novel after another in French and has become a well-known writer under the name of Henri Dénes.

Metatext theory was born out of translation theory. A. Popovič was an internationally renowned expert in the theory of translation. He published three books ←8 | 9→in Slovak, exclusively devoted to these issues: Preklad a výraz [Translation and Expression] (1968), Poetika umeleckého prekladu [Poetics of Artistic Translation] (1971) and Teória umeleckého prekladu [Theory of Artistic Translation] (1975). But already in the subtitle of the latter is included a notion that became central in the later period of research (Aspekty textu a literárnej metakomunikácie [Aspects of Text and Literary Metacommunication]). The transition from translation to metatexts in the context of the Nitra School is aptly characterised by the world-renowned Czech narratologist, Lubomír Doležel, in his book Kapitoly z dějin strukturální poetiky [Chapters from the History of Structural Poetics] (2000) as follows: “Inspired by [Jiří] Levý’s1 idea, a group of Slovak scholars expanded the study of literary adaptation beyond translation and specified its various types” (Doležel 2000, 190). The starting point of this theory is the fact that the author does not only draw on reality while creating a literary work, but another important factor is tradition, which includes the texts that contribute to the creation of a new literary work. For European culture, such a starting point is very often the Bible as an architext for the creation of new works. The story of Joseph and his brothers is a frequent subject in literary works (Thomas Mann: Joseph and His Brothers).

The idea to develop the theory of metatexts arose following his contacts with foreign scholars, which A. Popovič developed with extraordinary intensity. His proverbial extravagance absorbed everything that deviated from the norm and codified rules. It is almost symbolic that James S. Holmes’s (1924–1986) reflections on metatexts caught his eye. He quotes him in the book Tvorba a recepcia [Production and Reception] (1978, co-authored with F. Miko), where the theory of metatexts is in its most comprehensive form. It is based not only on Holmes’s reflections but also on his typology. Finally, Popovič concluded that “it is necessary to distinguish primary communication from secondary communication”, that is, it is also necessary to differentiate individual communication messages, both prototext (PT) and metatext (MT).