Namen pričujoče raziskave je prikazati do sedaj zanemarjeno vlogo češkoslovaških slavistov pri oblikovanju Parry-Lordove teorije ustnega pesništva. Potek predstavlja v obliki zgodbe o pristnem ...odkritju, ki izhaja iz določenega znanstvenega okolja (Antoine Meillet, praški lingvistični krožek itd.). Glavne vloge v njej igrajo Matija Murko, ustanovitelj češkoslovaške slavistike Roman Jakobson in nekateri drugi raziskovalci. Največ pozornosti članek posveča Murkovim in Parryjevim znanstveno-raziskovalnim strategijam, ki sta jih uporabljala med potovanji na Balkan leta 1930, in jih primerja. Članek razkriva tudi določene povezave med Murkom in Lordom, ter nekatere njihove dokaze, ki do sedaj še niso bili objavljeni.
The so-called Slovak question asked what place Slovaks held-or
should have held-in the former state of Czechoslovakia. Formed in
1918 at the end of World War I from the remains of the Hungarian
...Empire, and reformed after ceasing to exist during World War II,
the country would eventually split into the Czech Republic and
Slovakia after the "Velvet Divorce" in 1993. In the meantime, the
minority Slovaks often clashed with the majority Czechs over their
role in the nation. The Slovak Question examines this
debate from a transatlantic perspective. Explored through the
relationship between Slovaks, Americans of Slovak heritage, and
United States and Czechoslovakian policymakers, it shows how Slovak
national activism in America helped the Slovaks establish a sense
of independent identity and national political assertion after
World War I. It also shows how Slovak American leaders influenced
US policy by conceptualizing the United States and Slovakia as
natural allies due to their connections through immigration. This
process played a critical role in undermining attempts to establish
a united Czechoslovakian identity and instead caused a divide
between the two groups, which was exploited by Nazi Germany and
then by other actors during the Cold War, and proved ultimately to
be insurmountable.
This book takes a new approach to interwar Prague by addressing religion as an integral part of the city’s cultural history. Berglund views Prague’s cultural history in the broader context of ...religious change and secularization in 20th-century Europe. Based on detailed knowledge of sources, the monograph explores the interdisciplinary linkages between politics, architecture and theology in the building of symbolism and a “new mythology" of the first Czechoslovak republic (1918-1938). Berglund´s text provides an important service for understanding both Czech history as well as current Czech political debate. The author’s method can be characterized as culture history, able to connect several disciplines, emphasizing common topic (religion, politics, symbolics). Modern Czech elites, superficially characterized as “ateistic", appears in a new light to be deeply religious, a transition from more traditional, (mostly) Catholic religiosity, to a concept of a new, modern, ethical religion. The study incorporates biographical research, focusing on three principal characters: Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, Czechoslovakia’s first president; his daughter Alice Garrigue Masaryková, founding director of the Czechoslovak Red Cross; and Joze Plecnik, the Slovenian architect who directed the renovations of Prague Castle.
In this collection of writings produced between 2000 and 2018, the pioneering literary historian of the Czech underground, Martin Machovec, examines the multifarious nature of the underground ...phenomenon. After devoting considerable attention to the circle surrounding the band The Plastic People of the Universe and their manager, the poet Ivan M. Jirous, Machovec turns outward to examine the broader concept of the underground, comparing the Czech incarnation not only with the movements of its Central and Eastern European neighbors, but also with those in the world at large. In one essay, he reflects on the so-called Půlnoc Editions, which published illegal texts in the darkest days of the late forties and early fifties. In other essays, Machovec examines the relationship between illegal texts published at home (samizdat) and those smuggled out to be published abroad (tamizdat), as well as the range of literature that can be classified as samizdat, drawing attention to movements frequently overlooked by literary critics. In his final, previously unpublished essay, Machovec examines Jirous’s “Report on the Third Czech Musical Revival" not as a merely historical document, but as literature itself.
In Quest of History Jiri Priban, Priban; Karel Hvizdala, Hvizdala; Stuart Hoskins, Hoskins
06/2020
eBook
On the centennial of the Czechs gaining their independence, award-winning Czech journalist Karel Hvížďala and Cardiff-based philosopher of law Jiří Přibán used the occasion to examine key moments in ...Czech history from the ninth century to the twenty-first. Covering such a broad scope allows the authors to look into the past and question how Czechs have viewed their history at different points – and what that means for the present and future. Employing the form of a dialogue, Hvížďala and Přibán raise and explore issues for the broader public that are normally reserved for university seminars, or avoided completely.“It’s an interesting book because simply by considering the ideas the authors of In Quest of History put forth, the reader loses his certainty of what is true and what is the common consensus – he becomes an individual."– Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Testaments Betrayed, and The Festival of Insignificance“This contemplation by two Czech intellectuals of Czech history, ‘the national narrative,’ collective memory, and contemporary politics should be mandatory reading for understanding the deeper context of our current crisis."– Jacques Rupnik, professor of political science at Sciences Po“Two men who are as European as they are Czech raise a question – Where are we headed? In answering, they deliver a solid classic. What an inspiring dialogue!"– Petr Pithart, Czech politician and signatory of Charter 77
Velvet Revolutions Vanek, Miroslav; Mücke, Pavel
2016, 2016-02-18, 2015-12-19
eBook
This book investigates how values such as freedom, work, family, free time, and politics changed in Czech society in the two decades before and after the November 1989 Velvet Revolution. Miroslav ...Vanek and Pavel Mücke use public opinion polls as well as 300 interviews with Czech citizens to create a multi-layered view of Czech history before 1989 and during the subsequent period of democratic transformation.
Ethnic minority issues played an important role in the history of Czechoslovakia, from 1918, during World War II and in the years immediately following it. Czechoslovakia became a model for solving ...ethnic and minority problems and legal regulations had always played a key role in the status of minorities. This book, which deals with issues concerning ethnic and language minorities in Czechoslovakia from a long-term perspective, is primarily intended for foreign readers. In recent years, ethnic minority issues are once again becoming relevant in Europe and thorough knowledge of earlier problems and solutions may facilitate further examination of the current problems.
Written between 1954 and 1957 and treating events from the Stalinist era of Czechoslovakia’s postwar Communist regime, iMidway Upon the Journey of Our Life/i flew in the face of the reigning ...aesthetic of socialist realism, an antiheroic novel informed by the literary theory of Viktor Shklovsky and constructed from episodes and lyrical sketches of the author and his neighbors’ everyday life in industrial north Bohemia, set against a backdrop of historical and cultural upheaval. Meditative and speculative reflections here alternate and overlap with fragmentary accounts of Josef Jedlicka’s own biography and slices of the lives of people around him, typically rendered as overheard conversations.The narrative passages range in chronology from May 1945 to the early 1950s, with sporadic leaps through time as the characters go about the business of “building a new society" and the mythology that goes with it. Due to its critical view of socialist society, Midway remained unpublished until 1966 when it emerged amid the easing of cultural control, but a complete version of this darkly comic novel did not appear in Czech until 1994.
In September 1938, the major powers of Europe convened in Munich to discuss the future of Czechoslovakia in light of territorial demands made by Adolf Hitler. The ensuing agreement signed by Germany, ...France, Great Britain, and Italy authorized the German takeover of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. Just four years later, however, the British government declared the Munich Agreement void and thus having no influence whatsoever on the future settlements of this region. With In the Shadow of Munich, Smetana brings a fresh perspective to an often misunderstood epoch of European history. Drawing on his extensive research in British and Czech government archives, as well as numerous diaries and memoirs from the period, Smetana aims to dispel frequent myths and stereotypes that have long influenced interpretations of British and Czech relations immediately before and during World War II. A unique and provocative work, In the Shadow of Munich is essential for scholars of Slavic, Central, and East European studies.
The Greengrocer and his TV Bren, Paulina
The greengrocer and his TV: the culture of communism after the 1968 Prague Spring,
03/2010
eBook
The 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia brought an end to the Prague Spring and its promise of "socialism with a human face." Before the invasion, Czech reformers had made unexpected use of ...television to advance political and social change. In its aftermath, Communist Party leaders employed the medium to achieve "normalization," pitching television stars against political dissidents in a televised spectacle that defined the times.
The Greengrocer and His TVoffers a new cultural history of communism from the Prague Spring to the Velvet Revolution that reveals how state-endorsed ideologies were played out on television, particularly through soap opera-like serials. In focusing on the small screen, Paulina Bren looks to the "normal" of normalization, to the everyday experience of late communism. The figure central to this book is the greengrocer who, in a seminal essay by Václav Havel, symbolized the ordinary citizen who acquiesced to the communist regime out of fear.
Bren challenges simplistic dichotomies of fearful acquiescence and courageous dissent to dramatically reconfigure what we know, or think we know, about everyday life under communism in the 1970s and 1980s. Deftly moving between the small screen, the street, and the Central Committee (and imaginatively drawing on a wide range of sources that include television shows, TV viewers' letters, newspapers, radio programs, the underground press, and the Communist Party archives), Bren shows how Havel's greengrocer actually experienced "normalization" and the ways in which popular television serials framed this experience.
Now back by popular demand, socialist-era serials, such asThe Woman Behind the CounterandThe Thirty Adventures of Major Zeman, provide, Bren contends, a way of seeing-literally and figuratively-Czechoslovakia's normalization and Eastern Europe's real socialism.
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