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The paper deals with personal names and their functions in the poetry collection Magorovy labutí písně (1985) written by Ivan Martin Jirous (1944–2011). According to underground poetics, Jirous uses real names. The nature of naming depends on whether the person is male (one-word and multi-word naming) or female (strictly one-word naming by first name); whether the person is close to the author (usually naming by the first name or a combination of a hypocorism and the last name) or historical figure (by the last name or a combination of the official first name and the last name). In the case of names of historical figures, the dominant function is associative, in the case of names of persons close to the author the functions are phatic (a distant contact with the named person), honorific (honouring the named persons) and magic (protection of named persons). One of the key features of Magorovy labutí písně is that names are often in rhyme position – rhyming names are a sign of virtuosity but at the same time of humorous poetry (epigram, satire). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the use of prefixes in the Czech accentual syllabic trochee. We test a hypothesis raised by Miroslav Červenka, Květa Sgallová, and Petr Kaiser which states that some authors in the 19th century used prefixes to moderate rhythmical irregularities. In our analysis - based on automatic prefix recognition in a large body of poetic texts from the Corpus of Czech Verse - we observe a clear tendency in the work of some authors to employ prefixes in such contexts with a frequency significantly higher than would be expected merely by chance. Furthermore, we observe this technique to be very common in the first half of the 19th century, but to gradually disappear in later works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides information on the Database of Czech Metres (DCM), which provides access to the metric and strophic description of almost 1,700 poetry collections from the 19th century and the early 20th century included in the Corpus of Czech Verse (CCV), with examples to show the usage options available. After a brief description of the DCM, attention focuses on 1) the representation of individual meters in DCM, 2) the function of unrhymed verses during the Czech National Revival, 3) the relationship between rhyme, strophe and metre patterns, 4) dactyls in the Czech National Revival, 5) the alexandrines of Jaroslav Vrchlický, 6) a comparison of the occurrence of fixed forms for Jan Neruda and Jaroslav Vrchlický, 7) the relationship between the sonnet and meter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]