Poezie Václava Hanky na pozadí lidových písní sebraných jeho otcem
Václav Hankaʼs poetry against the background of the folk songs collected by his father

Summary/Abstract: The writer, translator, Slavist and museum curator Václav Hanka (1791–1861) was, among other things, the author of many poems that are usually evaluated as a more or less successful echoes of folk poetry. We can confront the degree of their “folkiness” with the texts in the collection of folk songs that his father acquired for his own use. This collection represents in itself a remarkable document of contemporary private collecting carried out without higher artistic or scientific ambitions. If we compare Hanka’s poems with the folklore texts in his father’s collection, we can see that the poet appropriately used many of the structural elements of the text that are characteristic of a folk song. Nevertheless, Hanka’s poems remained in their essence entirely in the field of literary creation. This is all the more true if we realise how vague and practically indeterminate the contemporary understanding of folklore was.

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