Fabián, víly a čučkové: nadpřirozené bytosti a trampská próza
Fabian, Fairies and Goblins: Supernatural Beings and Hiker Fiction

Summary/Abstract: The Czech hiker movement (trampské hnutí) is largely based on various forms of interaction with the land that the hikers (trampové) visit and live on. This close relationship between hikers and the natural environment is, among other things, reflected in hiker legends and works of literature. Here, at the intersection of belles-lettres and folklore, we find numerous instances in which writers have taken various beings of superstition or fairy tales, and placed them in new contexts. This has led to the rediscovery and adaptation of traditional characters, like Fabian (the Krakonoš, or Rübezahl, of the Brdy mountains), or more generally defined supernatural forest beings like dwarfs, fairies and wild men. This also includes the creation of characters that are entirely new and plots that set traditional elements into different contexts.The article takes a folklore-literary perspective to analyse the way these motifs have been used in hiker fiction since the early twentieth century, the ways it differs from oral and historical literary representations, and what these nonhiker characters and distinctive atmospheres reveal about hikers’ perceptions of the natural environment. The source material for this article consists of hiker fiction of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and also considers the topics generally in the development of the composition of the motifs of hiker literature, which may be influenced by ‘mainstream’ mass culture.

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