| Abstrakt: |
The first part of the paper describes Frank Wollman's (1888-1969) theoretical opinions on the genesis, nature and function of folklore formulated by the Czech comparatist and Slavonic scholar in his hitherto unpublished university textbook Uvedení do methodologie literárněvědné a do theorie literatury (přelom 40.-50. let 20. stol.) [An introduction to the methodology of literary theory and to the theory of literature (at the turn of 1950s)]. Generally, Wollman conceived the textual ingredient of folklore as a reproductive art attached through its formative capacity to the entire verbal art. His structuralist starting points were reflected here primarily in the conviction that what matters in an analysis of a folkloric text is not its originality, but the act of reception and an individual existence, i.e. communicatively semiotic being. The second part of the paper examines "Wollman's Moravian collections", deemed lost by the pundit community. In contrast to the extensive collection of Slovak folk prose, completed by Wollman and his Bratislavabased students between 1928-1947 and not published, except in selections, until the turn of the millennium (Slovenské ľudové rozprávky 1-3, 1993-2004) [Slovak folk stories], the field researches in the whole territory of Moravia were conducted under Wollman's guidance by his students at Brno University. Regardless of these collections being carried on between 1929-1933, with only a limited circle of narrators and recorders, their genre and thematic variety manifest a specific type of folk verbal art interconnecting West Slavonic and East Slavonic cultural areas within the Central European context. The find of Moravian collections in Wollman's private inheritance and their expected publication can thus be seen as a seminal contribution to the history of both Czech and modern European folklore studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
