Proměny narativních postupů fikční prózy v osvícenských časopisech českých zemí
Changing Narrative Approaches in Prose Fiction in Bohemian Periodicals during the Enlightenment

Summary/Abstract: This study examines changes in narrative approaches in Czech, Moravian and (German written) Silesian belles lettres from 1770–1790. In its examination of historical poetics and changes in narrative methods, it draws on the structuralist studies of Lubomír Doležal (his “narrative text transformation” model) and Daniela Hodrová (fictive novel vs. reality novel). Instead of the idea that prose evolves in relation to a fixed “linguistic substrate” in an immanent, autonomous way, the author inclines to the notion of a plurality of poetic codes on various linguistic levels (from stylistic registers, “narrative methods” and narrative structures to individual genres and the comprehensive aesthetic that shapes entire epochs). The study starts with an outline the socio-historical background to the emergence of literary periodicals in the Czech Lands in the early 1770s and their authors’ publishing strategies. It then considers the transformational impact these periodicals had on the literary prose of the day. The third part examines how the belles lettres of literary periodicals reacted to impulses from Enlightenment poetics such as the sentimentalism of Laurence Sterne and the Sturm und Drang movement, with illustrative interpretations of the novellas Der Philosoph in der Suppe (The Philosopher in the Soup) by Johann Ferdinand Opitz, Die neue Sapfo (The New Sappho) by Christian Heinrich Spiess and Der sonderbare Kupler (The Peculiar Pimp) by Josef Herbst and Josef Kirpal.

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