Czech and Slovak comparative literature in the 20th century

Its major representatives – devoted disciples of F. Wollman and close colleagues of D. Ďurišin – while carrying out their studies from comparative contactology to typology and employing philosophical impulses (phenomenology; hermeneutics), never failed to combine the comparative method with directional and genological approaches. By the end of the 20th century, Czech and Slovak comparative literature had developed the theory of interliterariness, which was by transferred by Ďurišin as F. Wollman's follower from structural starting points to semiotics, considered a universal methodology of culture, and to the theory of reception and intertextuality. In the early 21st century, with the arrival and recognition of a new generation of literary scholars, methodology began to burgeon and interdisciplinary research was stimulated. The related scholarly pursuits resulted in publishing a monographic issue of World Literature Studies (2/2013, ed. by R. Gáfrik and M. Zelenka), entitled Comparative Literary Studies as Cultural Criticism, to supplement the 20th International Congress of Comparative Literatures (AILC/ICLA), held in Paris in July 2013. Parallel to it, in February 2015, the Association of Czech and Slovak Comparatists was established in Bratislava with the aim of stimulating literary thought within Czech and Slovak scholarly and cultural circles.