“Nature in Modernism”

Research Area 3 – Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces

Contact: nina.papcunova@savba.sk

Nina Papcunová is a doctoral student at the Institute of Slovak Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. Her dissertation, entitled Nature in Modernism, contributes to CEFRES Research Area 3.

The main objective of the thesis is to explore the cultural function of nature in Slovak literature between 1890 and 1925, corresponding to the poetic line of naturalism-symbolism-modernism. The research also focuses on the environmental awareness of modernist literature and its response to contemporary changes in the relationship between humans and nature (industrialization, war). The psychological aspects of the representation of nature will be equally relevant to the research. Thematically, the research will focus on motifs of natural disasters and destructive human interventions in nature, with an emphasis on their literary representation, aesthetic and functional use, and overall signification. The research will work with prose and poetic texts from a defined period and will cover many authors in the aim of capturing as many different approaches to the aforementioned themes and motifs as possible.

The methodology of the research is based on the theories of ecocriticism and ecopoetics (écopoétique; writing about nature – écrire la nature) applied to the study of modernism. Both theories focus on representations of nature in literary texts. While ecocriticism focuses primarily on the presence of nature in literature, ecopoetics examines in depth the aesthetic forms and shapes in which nature is captured in literature. Modernism as a period is often associated with the development of urbanization and thus also with urban space. Although nature appears in Slovak modernist texts, its depictions have not yet received significant attention from experts. My research presents an innovative approach to the defined issue on two levels: the core of the research is the representation of nature in a literary period that has so far been characterized by an interest in the city, and the research will be based on the use of ecocriticism and ecopoetics, which have not yet been significantly applied in literary research in our geographical area.

CV

Education

2024 – present: PhD candidate; Thesis: Príroda v modernizme (Nature in Modernism; La nature dans le modernisme), Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV), Bratislava

2019-2024: Master’s in Slovak and French language and culture with a specialisation in translation and interpretation, Comenius University, Bratislava

Additional education

2022-2024: Supplementary pedagogical studies focusing on teaching French – extension module, Comenius University in Bratislava

Recent publications

– Review in English of a publication by author Peter Adkins: The Modernist Anthropocene: Nonhuman Life and Planetary Change in James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes (2024), SLOVENSKÁ LITERATÚRA (in print)

– Recenzia pri príležitosti vydania publikácie od autorky Mgr. Silvia Rybárová, PhD.: Dejiny, pamäť a osobný príbeh v súčasnej francúzskej próze (2024), SLOVENSKÁ LITERATÚRA, zv. 72, 2025, č.3