This paper deals with Ladislav Hejdánek’s philosophical thought and its possible influences on the history of literature. Attention is focused on two problem areas: first on Hejdánek’s work on the ...nature of art, which was of substantial importance, particularly in the cultural and social polemics of the 1960s, as his theoretical definition of art went along similar lines to reader response criticism and Umberto Eco’s ideas. However, in view of his considerable detachment from the literature of the object it did not provide any initiatives that had a significant impact on literary studies concepts. Hejdánek’s non-object process philosophy, centring around the concept of the event, may be considered to be of greater importance. Here it is possible to seek tools for a more dynamic non-essential conception of periodization, and more than anything else, individual frameworks (genres, directions and discourses) with broader applicability.
Nová rada k starým sporům Šorm, Martin
Česká literatura,
2020, Volume:
68, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The poem Nová rada (New Council) written by Smil Flaška in the 1390s has an extensive interpretative history, thanks in particular to the fact that it has always been found attractive not only by ...literary scholars but also historians. In previous research it has served primarily as an illustration of political history, and to a lesser extent as testimony to late medieval intellectual literary culture and poetics. Research
into the poem has primarily sought proof of its link with the era and the reign of Václav IV rather than the meaning of the work within the preserved context, i.e. in manuscripts from the latter half of the 15th century. This study first presents the manuscript context of New Council. It then analyses evidence on the ways of perceiving New Council in humanist literature, while polemicizing against the previous research
interpretations of the intertextual links between New Council and literary works of the 16th century. A presentation is also made here of the variously inspiring perspectives of research during the 19th and 20th centuries, with the emphasis upon the central
interpretational approaches which the author subsequently expounds in detail. The extraordinary scribal framing, thanks to which transcriptions of the poem consistently record the precise date of origin, the title of the work and the name of the author, is perceived within the context of late medieval cultural revisits to preHussite times. At the time the poem was demonstrably being transcribed and read, it clearly functioned not as an exclusive lesson for the upper classes or as criticism of the king (sophisticatedly hidden within an allegory), but as a long-tried-and-tested “edutaining” text that was accessible to recipients from various social groups. While an approach based on associating the poem with a critique of Václav IV is not entirely demonstrable and inappropriately closes the text off from interpretation, interest in its meaning at the time and the material context of its preservation shows it to be part of the more broadly available intellectually educational and entertaining literature. The main aim of this study is to present New Council as a representation of the polyphonic created world, wherein the animals are not merely a source of learning for man as representative symbols, but also in themselves, thus compelling the recipient to enter a space between man and animal, relinquish the misleading categories of allegory,
irony, satire and moral teaching, and submit to the actual subjective effects of God’s word coming from non-human mouths. The animals’ utterances in New Council are based on religious teaching and lead to a transformation of the recipient’s conscience and perception.
This study deals with the Sources of Faith anthology dating from 1943, which contains fifteen short stories that came out top in a competition titled New Tomorrow. The aim was to publish texts that ...were meant to depict life in the Protectorate in the
spirit of Nazi propaganda. It was initiated by activist journalist Rudolf Novák, who had been assigned to the Leopold Mazáč publishers by the Nazi authorities in the
summer of 1942. The competition was entered primarily by younger authors who had not previously published, or who had only published unsophisticated prose works of popular fiction. The only fairly well-known contributor was Vojtěch Rozner. Although these stories had literary ambitions, none of them achieved a very high literary standard. This study focuses in particular on describing and interpreting the
motifs and subjects of Nazi propaganda which occur more or less implicitly in these texts. Almost omnipresent is the subject of the „New Europe“ and its construction. These stories often present the motif of children as the builders of the new world. Two texts also include an anti-Semitic element characterizing a racially pure Nazi Europe. This construction also involves the subject of workers’ labour and social
justice: workers are better off in the New Europe, they work happily in a comradely collective and their work is valued appropriately. Several stories also attempt to
interpret recent events in an activist spirit: the social contradictions of the First Republic, its collapse and the creation of the Protectorate. The issue of what was
known as the new Czech patriotism remained vague. While activist journalists and propagandists conceived it to be identification with a united Nazi Europe, the
authors of the stories under analysis stressed the motif of pragmatic defence of the nation and the longing to live to see a better future. No competition of this kind was ever repeated in subsequent years, so Sources of Faith remains a unique attempt to create a Czech activist literature.
Roman Kanda předložil studii o dvou významných představitelích českého strukturalismu, kteří se stali také výraznými reprezentanty „přechodu“ k marxistické metodě zkoumání literatury (kanda 2019). ...Zaměřil se na to, jak Jan Mukařovský a Felix Vodička odmítli některé vlastní strukturalistické teze, především v oblasti otázky vztahu individua a společnosti. Kandův přístup se vymezuje především vůči dvěma dominantním „diskurzivním strategiím“, skrze které dosavadní vědecká literatura interpretuje dílo zmíněných literárních vědců: první přístup označuje jako „matrici totalitarismu“, kde „zavržení strukturalismu je podáno jako podlehnutí ideologickému tlaku i za cenu ztráty vědecké, nebo dokonce morální integrity“. Přístup druhý popisuje jako „hledání strukturalistického jádra“, v jehož důsledku dochází k „faktické bagatelizaci marxisticko-leninské konverze, která je chápána spíše coby projev taktizování“ a hledá se „pravá“ či skrytá strukturalistická podstata i pozdějších teoretických prací obou badatelů.
