On the presence of Hispanic American Literature in Slovakia in the 20th Century

Abstract

The first book translations from Hispanic American literature into Slovak were published in 1948. In the following years, translations from Spanish into Slovak began to appear more systematically. The 1950s mark the beginning of the constitution of Slovak Hispanic Studies as a scientific field and Studies of the Spanish language as an independent field of study at the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University in Bratislava. The main objective of the present paper is to introduce the trajectory of the reception of Hispanic American literature in Slovakia from 1948 till the present time. We focus on revealing literary and nonliterary factors that influenced the diversity of the perception of Hispanic American literature in our cultural context. In the first phase (until the 1960s), this literature was perceived as a peripheral, exotic and "foreign" literature. In the 1970s and in the 1980s, it became the centre of attention of translators, publishers and readers. However, at the present time, Hispanic American literature is once again situated at the periphery, mainly because of extraliterary factors and the global pressure of Anglo-Saxon literature.