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Copyright of Knihovna is the property of Library Institute of the Czech National Library and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Campus novel, traditionally seen as a genre of English and American literature, has recently also gained attention in non-Anglophone literary traditions. The article focuses on campus fiction written in Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian after 1989. It provides a brief introduction to the terminology and classification of the campus novel within the Anglo-American literary tradition, offering a perspective on Central European campus fiction through this lens. It traces its genre hybridity and the dominant genres with which it is associated, such as satire, social detective fiction, historical detective fiction, metafiction, biography, and the Bildungsroman. It also indicates the historical periods in which the genre is set and the traits of the professor as protagonist. While campus satire is a shared feature of Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian literature in response to political change, each national literature emphasizes themes unique to its own literary and cultural traditions. These include the founding of Polish universities, identity and the reassessment of Ukrainian professors’ lives, the ironic treatment of the communist era in Czech and Slovak literature, and metafiction in Slovak literature.

The shifting critical reception of Petra Soukupová’s prose works in the context of the debate over the “literary mainstream” This study examines the way Petra Soukupová’s works of fiction have been reviewed by literary critics from the beginning of her career up until her latest book. While she was seen as an innovative writer after her first books came out, she has subsequently been seen as the key representative of what is known as the “literary mainstream”. Although the discussion over this literary mainstream has been going on among Czech literary critics for several years now, no consensus has been reached over the definition of this label. Hence this study first looks at the concept of the literary maintstream and then examines how it has influenced the critical reception of Petra Soukupová’s fiction.

This article presents the hitherto unknown letters the Czech writer Egon Hostovský (1908–1973) wrote to the Norwegian writer, critic, essayist, editor and translator Sigurd Hoel (1890–1960). These letters date from 1949–1956 and are preserved in the National Library of Norway in Oslo. Not only do they provide interesting information about Hostovský’s efforts to publish his works in Scandinavia, but they also testify to a close friendship between the two writers. The article also presents two letters by Graham Greene (1904–1991) which are also preserved in the file containing Hostovský’s letters in the Norwegian National Library. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecocriticism represents a trend of thought that has been gaining ground in the Czech academic milieu, and thinking about it raises a number of questions at the moment: whether there are any local analogues of ecocriticism, whether it makes sense to transfer the theory to the local context, and what the impact of such transfer could be. The main part of the article is devoted to the different phases of ecological consciousness in Czech literature and illustrates three of them with examples: the Romantic (Mácha, Erben, Furch), the early 20th century (Deml, Neumann) and the 1980s (Páral, Juliš). The conclusion of the article focuses on the question of the awareness of the state in these different phases and its inevitable incompleteness.

Copyright of Slavica Litteraria is the property of Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study deals with the thematisation of Jewishness in the inter-war prose writing of four authors from assimilated Jewish families: Richard Weiner (born 1884), František Langer (born 1888), Karel Poláček (born 1892) and Egon Hostovský (born 1908). Whereas the prose of the last-named author has received considerable attention in contemporary literary history, in the case of the remaining authors their Jewishness remains on the periphery of scholarly interest, or is mentioned in works of a synthetic character. A detailed reading of the work of all three prose writers reveals that for them Jewish culture did not represent an essential literary theme, and indeed they barely mentioned it whatsoever. An exception relates to the abundant references to anti-Semitism in Karel Poláček’s cycle of novels about the provincial town, which can be explained among other factors by the aggravated political situation in the second half of the 1930s.

In the Czech culture of the turn of the 20th century we can see the phenomenon of the orientalising of the Jewish populace, in which the archetype of the beautiful Jewess (la belle Juive) occupied a significant and somewhat different position. This study examines types of depiction of the beautiful Jewess in travelogues and fictional literature, and divides these tendencies into three types. The beautiful Jewess is construed by means of biblical similes and antecedents, while these often concern heavily eroticised representations that are not based on a biblical template but rather arise out of the imagination of the authors of the 19th century. The erotic subtext plays a fundamental role also in the case of the second tendency, though here the primary precursor is not a biblical figure or narrative, but the fictional character in the story rather represents a unique existence, without direct and determining intertextual ties. This type of beautiful Jewess is characterised by a significant borderline role between the Orient and the Occident, and at the same time in the narratives she also occupies the role of a tragic figure. The final tendency is to conceive the beautiful Jewess negatively, in which the narrative accentuates her use of her beauty in order to pursue her own selfish interests. Among other factors, the study examines modes of the orientalising of beautiful Jewesses, and reflects upon whether they concern positive or negative representations.

Philip Roth made no secret of his great admiration for the work of Franz Kafka, which ultimately brought him to Prague in the 1970s and fostered his interest in Czech culture. This contribution focuses on the reception of the personality and work of Franz Kafka in Philip Roth’s non-fiction writing. The first section focuses on Roth’s essential Kafkaesque essay ‘“I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting”; or Looking at Kafka’ from 1973, in which Roth combines an empathetic portrait of his favourite author with a counterfactual vision of Kafka’s life, in which the author of the Trial and the Castle did not die of tuberculosis and instead fled from the Holocaust to the United States, where he became Roth’s uncle. In the second section, based on Roth’s dialogue with Ivan Klíma from 1990, we document how Kafka serves Roth in his reflections on the position and role of the writer in society.

Was Ignác Cornova’s contribution to Czech-language literature only that of a historian? In the 1770s and 1780s he also happened to be the most acclaimed poet in Bohemia. Of the many reactions to Cornova’s work from German and Czech writers, this study focuses on Nábožné písně pro ka­tolického měšťana a sedláka k veřejným a domácím službám božím (Religious Songs for the Catholic Townsman and Countryman for Use in Public and Domestic Divine Service, 1791) by Václav Stach, with a verse dedication to Cornova. It emphasises that under the Habsburg monarchy the genre of religious songs and hymns was also a platform for forming a new readership and literary public, providing a ve- hicle for writers such as Michael Denis, Ignaz Cornova, Johann Peter Hofmann and Václav Stach himself for creative experimentation and a mutually beneficial communication of their work to the public. In this context, our study examines the conceptual and aesthetic links between Stach and the poetic models of Ignác Cornova.

Copyright of Slavica Wratislaviensia is the property of Wroclaw University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Slavica Wratislaviensia is the property of Wroclaw University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study analyses the reception of Petra Hůlová’s literary work in Poland with a focus on her publishers’ activities. The writer’s books have been published in two different publishing houses – W.A.B., one of the biggest fiction publishers in Poland, and Afera, small publishing house founded by bohemist and translator Julia Różewicz. The author of the paper – basing on the publishers’ strategies and the reviews of critics and readers – describes the influence of this transition on the perception of Petra Hůlová’s works in Poland and on the position of both writer and publisher in Polish literary field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functional emancipation of the professional status of women became one of the pivotal social themes of the first decade of building state socialism in Czechoslovakia. A newly discovered fragment of correspondence between the writer Helena Dvořáková (1895–1970), author of neorealistic psychologizing women’s novels, and the Nestor of Czech art history and conservation Zdeněk Wirth (1878–1961) points retrospectively to this gender-oriented debate also taking place in an informal form between representatives of the post-war cultural elites. In her letter of June 1954, Dvořáková refers to a social gathering at the Olympia Café, where she witnessed a discussion between the leading art historians Zdeněk Wirth and Emanuel Poche (1903–1987), in which they questioned the contribution of women in the field of intellectual culture. In the fifty years that women have had access to higher education, “they never invented gunpowder”, someone said during the discussion. As an unintended witness to the event, Dvořáková sets herself against similar accusations not only in the correspondence under review, but above all in her literary work, the leitmotif of which became the fortunes and social status of – among others – educated, academically established – women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article considers the role of historical fiction in Czech literature since the year 2000 and analyzes the depiction of history within the genre of family saga and novel chronicle based on the example of the first two volumes of Karin Lednická's intended trilogy Šikmý kostel (2020, 2021). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study deals with three book collections from the diaries of the Czech literary scholar and pedagogue Zdeněk Kožmín (1925-2007). The first book, Struktury (1995), contains his diary entries from 1975-1989, i.e. from the period of normalisation when he taught at a secondary school. The second book, entitled Obtisky (1998), covers the period 1990-1997. The study also includes a reflection on the reception of Kožmín's first two books by literary critics. The core of the study is the description and analysis of the third diary, which is titled Bubáčci. It contains Kožmín's diary entries from 1998-2002. The main thematic line of the book is Kožmín's coping with the illness and death of his wife Drahomíra, and his rendering of this reality oscillates between intimate confession and testimony. The study also deals with other themes that are important to Kožmín and related to his reflection on his old age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Knihovna is the property of Library Institute of the Czech National Library and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study commemorates the last two editors-in-chief of the Lumír literary maga- zine, whose lives and works have so far been largely neglected in the history of Czech literature. The critic Štěpán Jež (1885--1970) began writing for Lumír while still at university, and during his long life he held a number of posts in the literature section of the Umělecká beseda (Art forum), in the Kruh českých spisovatelů (Czech writers' circle) and on the editorial board of Lumír. In autumn 1939, a member of the younger generation, Josef Hobzek (1908--1989), took over from Jež as editor- in-chief of Lumír. It was assumed that with his training as a lawyer he would be better suited for official negotiations with the Nazi German authorities occupying the country. Hobzek, brought up in circles close to the upper levels of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, shared their conservative views of politics and the arts. In the Roman Catholic press he devoted himself to promoting the intellectual legacy of the historian Josef Pekař (1870--1937), even marrying one of Pekař's relations towards the end of the Second World War. Hobzek and Jež devoted most of their professional ener\y to the required organizational and editorial work, which helped to create the cultural environment and literary operations, but remained in many respects concealed from the general public. Later, after the Second World War, they no longer had an opportunity to realize publicly their literary ambitions or apply their broad learning and interests. In the new circumstances of Communist Czechoslovakia they were forced to give up their plans as writers and editors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Was Ignác Cornova’s contribution to Czech-language literature only that of a historian? In the 1770s and 1780s he also happened to be the most acclaimed poet in Bohemia. Of the many reactions to Cornova’s work from German and Czech writers, this study focuses on Nábožné písně pro katolického měšťana a sedláka k veřejným a domácím službám božím (Religious Songs for the Catholic Townsman and Countryman for Use in Public and Domestic Divine Service, 1791) by Václav Stach, with a verse dedication to Cornova. It emphasises that under the Habsburg monarchy the genre of religious songs and hymns was also a platform for forming a new readership and literary public, providing a vehicle for writers such as Michael Denis, Ignaz Cornova, Johann Peter Hofmann and Václav Stach himself for creative experimentation and a mutually beneficial communication of their work to the public. In this context, our study examines the conceptual and aesthetic links between Stach and the poetic models of Ignác Cornova. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study describes the origin and development of the friendship between the literary scholar Jan Mukařovský (1891-1975) and the writer Vladislav Vančura (1891-1942). Mukařovský's interpretations of Vančura's literary works are the main focus of the study. Both Mukařovský's published works and texts that were never published (e.g. university lectures) are analysed. On the basis of archival research, the author of the study proves that Mukařovský analysed Vančura's work much earlier than he published his first-ever work on Vančura in 1934. In the course of the 1940s to 1960s, Mukařovský published many texts on Vančura in which he remembered Vančura as a friend, poet, Communist and anti-fascist activist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on three recent publications dealing with broadside ballads in the Czech lands. These include a publication from regional museum collections and two exhibition catalogues. It presents the various ways of comprehending this interdisciplinary phenomenon and current research trends (research into the materiality of the prints, reflection on the musical component, multilingualism and the like). It also presents terminological considerations and reflects on the broadside ballad as part of 18th and 19th century popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jakub Deml is stereotypically labelled as a "Catholic poet". Therefore, his temporary involvement in the progressivist, anti-clerical Sokol ("Falcon") movement caused, and it is still causing, an embarrassment for many interpreters. The present article does not apply any normative criteria. Instead, it attempts to describe the way Jakub Deml realizes his "ressourcement", namely: how does he combine certain Christian cultural motifs and symbols, which he has kept from his "pre-Sokol" period, with the "new" Sokol system of signs, values, and authoritative names? In the following step, the role of Greek antiquity in Deml's four "Sokol" books (1923-1926) is analysed. Antiquity was crucial for the Sokol ideology, particularly for Miroslav Tyrš, the founder of Sokol, who was celebrated by Deml in a hagiographic way. Antiquity only holds, however, a surprisingly limited place in Deml's relevant texts. The list of explicit "Greek" motifs appears to be quite short. Deml shares with Sokol ideology, however, certain values, viewed by them (as by other progressivist movements) as stereotypically "Greek" and implicitly anticlerical (but not anti-Christian): personal freedom, earthliness, a healthy body, an emotional relationship to a specific local community. Deml's Sokol involvement did not last long. After several years, it ended with a dramatic break. Nonetheless, it provides an important literary testimony to the intellectual and spiritual openness of Czechoslovak society in the early 1920s, making such unexpected encounters possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study clarifies the events that led to the appearance of the word 'robot' in world culture and shows the international reception of the work of Karel Čapek R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which caused a deep transformation of the robot into a mechanical anthropomorphic creature. All the author's texts dedicated to the topic are translated into Italian for the first time, and primary sources which testify the resonance that R.U.R. received in Italy have been republished.

This article deals with the issues of introducing web resources into subject literary bibliographies. This issue is at first analyzed on the general level as the methodological challenge of online sources systematic introduction into the context of managing current bibliography and then case studies follow targeted on specific problems of internet material bibliography treatment. Firstly one discusses the issues related to bibliographical processing of online documents (web pages, online journals, etc.), which are in complex and variable relations to those available in print. An attention is paid to the methodological issues, in particular providing criteria of web resources selection. The need for archivization of bibliographically processed materials which we assess as the crucial element of any systematic bibliographical processing of Internet materials will be also highlighted. In the following part study presents the preliminarily classification of the new specific genres of internet content: blogs and literary forums. Firstly the Polish literary blogosphere is analysed and preliminarily typology of this document type is introduced. Later a phenomenon of literary forums is taken into consideration. Based on an example of poetry forum Nieszuflada.pl more detailed quantitative analysis of this resource type is given and issues of authorship attribution in the digital environment are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the anthology Jewish Names, often called the beginning of Czech alternative culture, was published in 1995, several central questions concerning this seminal collection from the early 1950s remain unclear: Who initiated it, when was it assembled, and what is its connection with the causa of the ‘Trotzkyites’ in Prague and later anti-semitic show trials? Answers can be found if one appreciates the pivotal role of Honza Krejcarová in this unique project. The article connects dots between Czech history during the Protectorate when young Honza witnessed her mother Milena Jesenská’s resistance activities, and the late 1940s of Stalinist Czechoslovakia when the State Security started surveilling and persecuting Krejcarová. Based on archival studies the article argues for the parallelism between secret service practices (interrogation, the revealing of names in the form of denunciation) and automatic surrealist writing techniques. Drawing on the example of the name of the Author it analyses the paratextual structure of the anthology connected to its literary models, mainly from France. Jewish Names is a rich collection of fictitious ‘Jewish’ pseudonyms attributed to real Czech writers, stressing the vulnerability of the literary intelligentsia, their mineurité. And it is this paratextual construction which can be considered as the most daring and auto-referential aspect of this illegal publishing project. The article reveals problematic aspects of the chosen path of pseudonymy and anonymity. Changing or omitting one’s name is a common trait of female biographies, complicating the attribution of authorship. The article shows how pseudonymy takes its toll on an existential, gender, political, and historical level — precluding until today the proper names from entering Czech literary history

Copyright of Bohemistyka is the property of Instytut Filologii Slowianskiej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper presents a stage in the life of Jaromír Šavrda (1933-1988), a writer, editor, journalist, dissident, the period of his trial in 1979. The way the „reception“ of the books and samizdat volumes was conducted by the State Secret Police is examined. The paper builds on archive materials made available for the first time (Jaromír Šavrda´s inheritence is stored in Ostrava City Archive), it goes through the materials, indictments, it quotes from extensive judgements. It focuses on non-literary pseudo-assessments of the books and samizdat volumes, which were confiscated during a police raid in Šavrda´s place and used to bring charges against him. Another variant shows a process of criminalizing literature, excluding and removing writings from literary communication.

The study focuses on Bronislav Wellek, Adolph Donath, Camill Hoffmann, Oskar Wiener and Otto Hauser and their translations and articles on modern Czech literature published in the German journal Aus fremden Zungen (1891–1910). This fortnightly established by Joseph Kürschner dealt exclusively with foreign literature. Its openness to all kinds of literary currents and little-known minor literatures was unique within the system of German literary journals. A comparison indicates the key role played by mediators. The primary requirement for their activity was multilingualism, and it turns out that in the case of all the figures under consideration, language did not necessarily have the nationally symbolic significance ascribed by politics, and their identity basically did not depend on their use of one language or another. The progress and success of this mediation was not just decided by the literary standard of the translation, but all five translators were concerned to improve the standard of translation, as well as to change the approach to translation in general. The choice of text and its succeeded publication was determined by the involvement of the mediators in the Czech and German literary context. Hence Bronislav Wellek focused primarily on translations and interpretations of poetry by Jaroslav Vrchlický and J. S. Machar, whom he knew personally and who also introduced him to their own literary and intellectual circles. It was thanks to Vrchlický that he printed his translations in Eduard Albert’s anthologies Poesie aus Böhmen (1893–1895). Machar was responsible for other translations, e.g. Hilbert’s drama Vina, which Hermann Bahr was to help promote in the German-language sphere. Between 1896 and 1898, Adolph Donath attempted to build up his position as mediator between the Moderní revue circle and some representatives of Viennese modernism (e.g. Karl Kraus, Peter Altenberg and Felix Rappaport). For Aus fremden Zungen he translated an impressionistic short story by Luisa Ziková Bílý květ (White Flower). In a fivepart series and an accompanying study modern Czech prose (J. Zeyer, V. Mrštík, F. X. Svoboda, J. K. Šlejhar and R. Svobodová) was presented by Camill Hoffmann and Oskar Wiener. Their mediation activities were based on direct relations with Prague Czech authors of the youngest generation, on whom Hoffmann also focused in his articles for other German journals, though in Aus fremden Zungen he was concerned with surveying the modernist work of the 1890s. Samples of Czech prose were followed on by translations from modern Czech lyric poetry (O. Březina, A. Sova, K. Hlaváček and V. Dyk) written by Otto Hauser. This polyglot and translator from numerous languages was a different kind of Viennese mediator. In contrast to Wellek and Hoffmann, Hauser was only in sporadic correspondence with Sova and Březina. His literary assessment of their poetry was based on his broad knowledge of contemporary European poetry, including minor literatures (such as Danish, Dutch and Croatian) and as such is of importance. These examples show that literary mediation is a complex rapprochement of variously defined and construed contexts, which have their reflected and unrealized limits.

The article examines vampires in Czech Decadent literature as polyvalent symbols that stand simultaneously for culture as a vampiric force and for decadence as a poisonous and infectious phenomenon. Vampires can also be associated with homosexuality, particularly in the work of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic. In addition, they represent the power of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had been draining the blood of Bohemia for centuries, leaving Prague a “dead city”, as well as the Czechs’ resistance to their subaltern status through a poisonous entropy that destroys not only the oppressors but also Czechs themselves. As such, Czech vampires have their counterpart in barbarians, who threaten to destroy the empire from without.

The article focuses on Milan Kundera’s works from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, particularly on Poslední máj (The Last of May) in the versions of 1955 and 1961, and Kundera’s first Art of the Novel (Umění románu), a study on the works of Vladislav Vančura, finished in 1959. The article argues that these works are interesting not only from the point of view of Kundera’s then Marxist-Leninist political stance, but also with respect to genre theory and practise as it can be retraced in his writing before the appearance of the famous novels of the mid-1960s. The article demonstrates that the relationship between lyricism and the novel in these early works exhibits many features which are to be found in his later work. The novel takes up a privileged position — albeit with a different and more explicitly political, party-bound motivation, representing the “great epic” required by “the people”. The article also contains reflections on Kundera’s role in the Czechoslovak Stalinists cult of Julius Fučík, related to the genre issues mentioned insofar as Fučík is placed by Kundera in the same category as Vančura in the first Art of the Novel.

This article presents a research project on the history of mentalities in Czech culture of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. The project analyses textbooks for the teaching of Czech literature for secondary schools. It focuses in particular on the excerpts from the literary works and analyses their potential for the learners to acquire cultural and historical knowledge as well as personal skills. These excerpts are conceptualized here as Denkbilder, a term that has been used repeatedly in German literature studies recently to define short prose texts that stimulate imagination as well as reflection. Responding to the high number of literary works from world literature in the Czech textbooks analysed for the project, this article addresses the contrasting presentations of one classic of German literature, Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues). It illustrates how a single literary work can be presented in different ways in literature textbooks, offering the learners different approaches for relating to the text and activating their cognitive and imaginative resources.

This study deals with the hitherto little known correspondence between writers Jakub Deml (1878-1961) and Jaroslav Durych (1886-1962), which has only been partially researched. This is an extensive collection of correspondence of importance to both writers, which took place over two periods (1906-1909 anda1916-1959). The letters from the first period document both their translation collaboration with the old Imperial publisher Josef Florian and their own work, as well as their opinions on the contemporary literary and social scene. However, they also record the first substantial disputes between the two writers, primarily involving their different conceptions of Catholic faith and their view of poet Otokar Březina. During the second period Deml and Durych exchanged mail more intensively around the late 1910s and the early 1920s. This study presents their collaboration on Deml's Šlépěje (Footprints) and summarizes the reasons for its termination. The final part focuses on the sharp controversy provoked by Deml's book Mé svědectví o Otokaru Březinovi (My Testimony on Otokar Březina, 1931). Both writers publicly engaged in these polemics on the pages of their own publicity platforms, resulting in the end of their friendship for a long time. They did not resume their correspondence until almost twenty years later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana (Exposition on the Revelation to St.John), written by Jakoubek of Stříbro, is the most extensive theological treatise written in Czech during the period of early Hussite radicalism at the beginning of the 1420s. With this work, Jakoubek attempted to put Czech on an equal footing with Latin within the theological reformist discourse. This study examines the character ofjakoubek's Výklad, its significance in the context of Bohemian Latin and Czech theological discourses, and its impact on later, mainly Latin, works. It also establishes that we are not dealing with a later translation, but that Výklad na Zjevenie was originally written in Czech. Jakoubek in this text constructed a counterpoint to the radical apocalyptic visions rooted in diverse exegetical approaches. The focus of his attention - polemically and propagandistically - was primarily the reception of the Eucharistic Communion sub utraque specie. Jakoubek's commentary later influenced Hussite theological thought, one of the clearest examples being the Latin Expositio super Apocalypsim written by the Táborite theologian Nicholas of Pelhřimov in 1429-1430. Nicholas adopted not only Jakoubek's exegetical method but also some of his approaches to the polemical themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is noticeable in the 1920s, when Czech modern poetry and Vítězslav Nezval in particular express their avant-garde quests through the felicitous poetic program, is the aesthetic distancing from the romantic melancholy and respectively from the interpretation of landscape as an object of contemplation and a mediator between the human soul and the universe. The preference of poetism for civilization diversity and metropolitan dynamics and its superficial disregard for nature are the reasons why this aspect of Vítězslav Nezval's poetry has remained outside the field of literary research so far. The main objective of this paper is to discover and outline the manifestations of artistic treatment of nature in Nezval's poetry even when he denies its place in modern poetry in general. The paper focuses on those transformational processes of anti-mimetic nature through which the image of the landscape is no longer perceived as a reflection of the real entities of nature but as a fictional entity based on the principle of collage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study observes the process whereby the Czech cultural scene was redefined during the first few months of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In an attempt to protect Czech culture and to preserve the autonomy of Czech institutions as proclaimed by the German occupiers, society deliberately undertook centralization and self-regulatory measures. The National Partnership (Národní souručenství), which 97% of the male population joined during spring 1939, was initiated as part of its internal policy by the Cultural Council, which had had programmatic continuity since November 1938. Under the "new conditions" it was meant to become the autonomous, proactive working and advisory centre for the National Partnership's cultural and educational work. Although it had taken part in the organization of such spontaneous demonstrations as the second burial of Karel Hynek Mácha, it was soon arranging a number of promotional events in an attempt to centralize, control and regulate the cultural scene. In its cultural and political discourse it highlighted the topoi of the good Czech book, which became a symbol of resistance and a means for preserving national identity. The most successful promotional event used by the Cultural Council to take control of the entire spectrum of artistic and cultural life within the Protectorate was the December Czech Book Month organized in towns and rural areas. The preparations were strictly centralized and controlled, and it was only possible to exhibit books previously listed by the Cultural Council. "A good Czech book" became a cult object, on the basis of which Protectorate society was newly defined, legitimizing it in the face of overbearing German culture and bolstering its resistance. The event also resulted in economic assistance to the graphic and book industries, while redefining the Czech literary scene and the totalitarization of Czech society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The paper focuses on the topic of humor in literature, its development, its theoretical concept, as well as library applications. It defines this phenomenon, follows its historical development, but primarily focuses on its current perception and place in the Czech literature. Presents a basic overview of the representation of literature associated with humor in the library collections of selected institutions and subject him to the topic of bibliotherapy and bibliopedagogy as manifestations of social and educationally oriented contemporary librarianship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]