Literárněvědná metoda Alexandra Sticha
Alexander Stich's Method in Literary Studies

Summary/Abstract: In this article the author discusses the basis of the methods and approaches of Alexandr Stich (1934–2003). He focuses on Stich’s literary scholarship, particularly on what he considers the core of Stich’s approach, the observation of established, often particularly language-based units of the thematic structure of a work of literature (motifs) in specific texts and also across various texts, often within large periods. Though it is analytical and descriptive, the article also pays attention to the reception of Stich’s method, specifically some critical responses to it. In the first part, the author outlines Stich’s works of literary scholarship, describing the premises of Stich’s approach (“literature is made from literature”), and analyzing the theme-based terminology Stich employs. He also considers the three mainstays of Stich’s method in literary scholarship – intertextuality, reception theory (the universe of texts appears primarily synchronically), and the impact of Prague School Structuralism, particularly linguistic (the use of the terms structure and structural). The second part comprises a thorough analysis of some of Stich’s essays, selecting “Josef Bonaventura Pitr a ‘střeva milosrdenství’” from the essays on Baroque motifs, “Tradiční romantické motivy v české hudbě and poezii 19. století (Šárky)” from the essays concerned with the Romantic motif of revenge/punishment, and his commentary to an 2000 edition of Jan Kořínek’s Staré pamětí kutnohorské (1675), which makes particularly great use of the intertextual approach. In the third part of the article, the author comments on some important critical responses to Stich’s method in literary studies – a text by Mojmír Otruba, reacting to a conference paper Stich gave on the relationship between Tyl and Mácha, and reviews of Stich’s Seifertova Světlem oděná (1998), the most important of which is by Michael Špirit. The author concludes with a concise summary of the aim of his work, namely, to formulate more clearly Stich’s original methods in his essays on literature, and thus offer them up for critical discussion.

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