Zagubiona tradycja. Powroty do kultury rycerskiej w literaturze czeskiej
The Lost Tradition. Returns to Chivalric Culture in Czech Literature

Author(s): Anna Gawarecka
Subject(s): History, Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts, Studies of Literature, Philology
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Middle Ages; Order of Teutonic Knights; Czech cultural heritage
Summary/Abstract: Czech literature relatively seldom sees the chivalric ethos as its integral, culturally active tradition. At the source of this „lack” lie reasons related to the 19th-century project ofthe „revived” national culture, in which the suitably interpreted history of Bohemia playeda significant role. In this plan, the idealized reminiscences of the democratic and plebeianHussite revolt incorporated into a utopian vision of nationality, were of prime importance;they counterbalanced the politics of the Austrian state oriented toward sustaining the cultof aristocratism. An introduction of the knight as a literary character, in some ways organically related to the actualization of medieval subject matter, in effect assimilates itself into the debate over the shape of Czech historical memory. In the works of Vladimír Neff, Karl Michal and Vladimír Körner, any reference to the category of chivalry is usually associated with its disparaging, or at least calling it into doubt, and it is simultaneously subordinated to the question about the presence of alternative traditions, capable of formulating anew and re-reading the paradigm of Czech identity.

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