Around a «donquijotada» of Slovak literature

Abstract

This paper is part of the research project VEGA 1/0853/14, which studies the particularities of the Slovak reception of Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote of La Mancha. The author introduces and comparatively analyses an interesting case of this
reception, a work which was one of the first parodic recreations of Cervantes’s novel in the cultural context of the Kingdom of Hungary: Bendeguz, Gyula Kolompos und Pista Kurtaforint (1841), a satirical novel written by Slovak playwright Ján Chalupka (1791-1871). The fact that it was published in Leipzig in German language facilitated its reception in the German-speaking area. What’s most interesting is that the author subtitled the novel: Eine Donquixottiade nach der neuesten Mode, assuming that Cervantes’s novel was known in the Central European cultural space in the first half of the nineteenth century.