Attempts at creating a new concept of literature •

Abstract

Using the term Hungarian literature in (Czecho-)Slovakia has been a problem for literary historiography specialised on reflecting on this corpus since the emergence of minority Hungarian literatures defined by geopolitics. Since the twenties onwards, the texts of the belletristic corpus have been asking, from time to time, about the relationships among space and identity, and providing answers from approaches heroic to ironic. The relationships of identity and space are reflected vigorously not only in belletristic representations but in the literary criticism that reflects on them and in literary historiography as well. In my study, I am going to follow the process having taken place in the literary-historical narrative between the two World Wars, which aimed to transform the geopolitical factors associated with identity into a constructed space through articulating the experience of intermediacy and reflecting on the “as-if” state of the intercultural existence of Hungarian literature in Slovakia.