THEMATIC DIFFERENCES IN THE CONCEPT OF THE REFERENTIAL (MODERN) AND SELF-REFERENTIAL (POSTMODERN) NARRATIVE OR HOW TO UNDERSTAND A LITERATURE (Slovak title below)

(Slovak title: Tematicke diferencie v koncepte referencneho (moderneho) a autoreferencneho (postmoderneho) narativu alebo ako si porozumiet s literaturou). This study is a contribution to the research of chosen Slovak proses written in the second half of 20th century from the viewpoint of the thematic-topological research and structural-semantic interpretation. It is based on the characteristics of sujet-fabula as well as text narrative qualities. The interpretation framework is established by means of a journey chronotope and the topical circumstances of an epic narrative derived from it, which occur on three levels of the thematic structure of an epic narration. The author defines them as the synopsis, the scenery and the digression and within each she differentiates various narrative modalities: from ostensively mimetic to self-referentially discursive. The research focuses on the verifying referential and self-referential elements of narration in connection with the research of epic prose as a thematic-topological event related to travelling and changes during the journey. From the methodological viewpoint, the study takes a thematic approach to the literary material, because it regards the material as adequately communicative and able to convey our experience with a literary text as an object of interpretation in diachronic cultural-historical context. In order to obtain material to study, texts of R. Sloboda, V. Sikula a P. Vilikovsky were used, all the writers being of the author's regular interest.