Lyrical Drama of the 1940s in the Context of the Slovak Surrealist Movement

Strany: 337 - 358

Jazyk: eng

This article focuses on the clarification of the terms “lyrical drama” and “poetic drama” as well as on the definition of their features in the avant-garde era. It briefly introduces “nadrealizmus” (literally “overrealism”) as a Slovak variant of the surrealist movement. Based on structural and semiotic criteria, it situates six plays from the first half of the 1940s within the context of surrealist drama and theatre. It records the change of dramatic form in the categories of character, plot, composition, and genre. In the case of staged plays, it uses contemporary reviews to describe directorial techniques. It also pays attention to the coexistence of lyrical and dramatic principles, the loosening of structure, the use of montage, the associative approach, working with rhythm, and the oscillation between the visual and the musical. On this basis, it demonstrates that the plays of Rudolf Dilong, Štefan Žáry, Ján Poničan, Peter Zvon and Leopold Lahola from the early 1940s correspond to avant-garde poetics in drama and deal with key philosophical and anthropological issues of the surrealist movement, such as the problem of the subject, freedom, creativity, the nature of reality, and the validity of dreams.

ISO 690:

Garay Kročanová, D. 2025. Lyrical Drama of the 1940s in the Context of the Slovak Surrealist Movement. In Slovenská literatúra, vol. 72, no.4, pp. 337-358. 0037-6973. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/slovlit.2025.72.4.5

APA:

Garay Kročanová, D. (2025). Lyrical Drama of the 1940s in the Context of the Slovak Surrealist Movement. Slovenská literatúra, 72(4), 337-358. 0037-6973. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/slovlit.2025.72.4.5

Vydavateľ: Ústav slovenskej literatúry SAV / Institute of Slovak Literature SAS