The History of Literature vs. Contemporary Czech Literary Studies

The author presents the state of the Czech literary historiography of the last decades. The isolation of the Czech humanities and the strong influence of the ideology before 1989 resulted, after the introduction of democracy, in an increased influx of the humanist thought from abroad and heated debates on how to write the history of literature if at all. The greatest project of the times is Dějiny české literatury 1945–1989. I–IV., edited by Pavel Janoušek; it is a four volume work that mainly presents a traditional approach to the history of literature. The first volume in the series on Czech literature in the 20th century is also promising to be a great enterprise Dějiny nové moderny. Česká literatura v letech 1905–1923, edited by Vladimír Papoušek; this book describes the history of literary texts aiming to capture the connections and counterpoints at the same time concentrating on the process of changing the literary discourse, the paradigm of the epoch. The two contrasting approaches are complemented by other publications that present various methodological approaches.

ISSN: 1733-165X

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