The Boy and Bachelor in Slovak Literature (not only) for Children and Young Adults

Abstract

In the text, it is possible to observe the character of a young man which in a literary-historical perspective corresponds to several literary types in Slovak literature. The interpretation focuses on modelling and transforming a plebeian and obedient hero into a modern, educated and confident bachelor. At the same time, it marginally touches on the image of a man / father, who changes into an uncertain, unreliable and often absent parent on the axis of the dominant and patriarchal. The text also presents poetological aspects of the protagonists' creation: a realistic image in Kukučín's short stories, a slightly subjectivised and expressive image of a boy of interwar prose, a naive and stylised type from the 1950s fiction, an immediate, an authentic and plastic hero modelled by modern prose in novels for young adults. Transformations of construction can also be observed at the linguo-stylistic level of texts, the way of narration, and the choice of narrator.