Subject and City (and Politics): Five Decades in Bratislava in Janko Alexy’s Texts

The article investigates the relationship between literary aesthetic opinions of Ľudovít Štúr (1815 – 1856) presented in his lectures in the early 1840s and the poetics of Andrej Sládkovič’s (1820 – 1872) Detvan (1846, published in book form in 1853). The article offers an interpretation of the poem through the prism of the topics, motives and poetic devices that might suggest that Sládkovič was acquainted with Štúr’s theoretical work and consciously attempted at a realisation of Štúr’s idea of Slavic poetry. The reading presented in the article pinpoints the latent dramatic potential of Sládkovič’s poem that is coded in its performative elements. Discussing the poem as belonging to the genre of dramatic poetry is justified by such typological characteristics as syncretism of its lyric and epic parts and an increased level of performativity. Detvan as a dramatic poem is discussed in the wider context of Sládkovič’s literary aesthetic views and those of his activities that are linked with dramatic art