Die Anfänge der modernen tschechischen Dichtung im Spiegel der Rezensionskritik
The Beginnings of Modern Czech Poetry as Reflected in Journal Reviews

Summary/Abstract: The paper considers how critical reviews in Central European journals could contribute to the formation of modern Czech poetry at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries and in the first two decades of the 19th century, until the disputes around 1817 about prosody and poetic autonomy in general significantly affected its discourse. It places these mostly anonymous reviews within the broader framework of reviews of poetry in German and Czech from the Bohemian Lands, especially those in the major review journals (Jenaische allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Leipziger Literatur- Zeitung, Annalen der österreichischen Literatur, etc.), in which Bohemian and Moravian contributors also found a place, given the obstacles to the development of domestic periodicals. It argues that this criticism had discussed the constitution of a modern authorial type, which was, however, especially in domestic Bohemian and Moravian post-revolutionary conditions strongly concentrated on general social benefit of literature. Early Czech-language poets of Antonín Jaroslav Puchmajer’s circle asserted themselves with a similar social emphasis in self-criticism in the Viennese Annalen, taking into account the still partly scholarly nature of period criticism and representative values of Czech as a kingdom’s language. Characteristically of this scholarly-publicist criticism in contemporary Central Europe, most attention was paid to works such as Joseph Müller’s translation of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, Meinert’s Der Fylgie or The Manuscript of Dvůr Králové, that could “shed light” on the former role of poetry for nations and open up ways for its modern authors (see similar German discussions on the Nibelungenlied among emerging national philologists and poets).

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