Mr. Dales, Mr. Company & Co. Nepriateľ v poézii socialistického realizmu na príklade antiamerickej motiviky

The study examines the parameters of anti-American sentiment in Slovak socia-list realist poetry. The research is based on the assumption that period thinking about ideological antagonism was Manichaean in character, which is connec ted with the frequent use of extreme, demonizing mechanisms in the structure of descriptions of enemy subjects. The poetry of this period is subordinated to its “combat mission”, and as a result its expressive means are closely linked to the political propaganda language of the time. In the context of Stalinist ideology, poetic representations of the American enemy range from personification through typification to stereotyping, while the characteristics of the representations examined are determined by the need to communicate a polarized image of the world in a situation in which literary production cannot rely on direct knowledge of reality. Such writing therefore rests on a limited number of reference points, such as the name of an exposed representative of the enemy camp, ideological stereotypes, and similar elements. This helps complete the image of socialist re-alism as a phenomenon based on a radical reduction of reality.