Andrej Melicherčík – osobnosť v dobe, doba v osobnosti (na príklade jednej bádateľskej témy)

Prof. PhDr. Andrej Melicherčík, CSc. (1917–1966) is one of the founding personalities of professional folklore studies in Slovakia. During his studies of Slovak and German at the Slovak University (today, Comenius University) in Bratislava, he was largely influenced by the lectures of P. G. Bogatyryov who was at that time working at the Bratislava university. Bogatyryov’s application of functional structuralism was an inspiration for Melicherčík’s research and theoretical thinking about the phenomena of traditional culture, specifically folklore, but the paper also focuses on Melicherčík’s application of the so-called Marxist methodology. The article deals with the thematic and methodological contexts of Melicherčík’s significant work on the contemporary historical and political turning points of the 20 th century in Czechoslovakia. The author focused on one of the dominant topics of Melicherčík’s research programme – the robber/Jánošík tradition, and describes the underlying conceptual contexts and the methodological tools used. The objects of analysis were Melicherčík’s monograph books on this topic and chapters in synthesis works