Souběžná míjení. Marxismus a zlom v pojetí literární „struktury“

Author(s): Richard Müller / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2018

This study focuses on a particular distinctive moment in the Czech and French history of literary thinking which took place in the latter half of the 1960s and which saw not only an encounter of Marxism and structuralism, but also a shift and radical change in the conception of literary structure. Marxist philosopher and historian Robert Kalivodapresents the development of Jan Mukařovský’s structural literary aesthetics from a Marxist and Freudian perspective ; according to him, Mukařovský’s conception matured — in association with the production and reflection of the interwar artistic avant-garde (Karel Teige) — towards a conception of aesthetic function and value as transparent anthropic principles and work of art as a dynamic ensemble of extra-aesthetic functions and values. Simultaneously, the representative of French Althusserian Marxism Pierre Macherey formulates his conception of literary output as a specific mode in the production of speech and literary structure as a space of difference, in which the ideological universalizations of the period are unconsciously presented in a critical light. Within the Czech structuralist tradition — and in harmony with its avant-garde pedigree — a parallel conception then emerges within the works of Oleg Sus and Milan Jankovič of literary structure as a structure that is unconsolidated and unconsolidatable, as the process and action of meaning, the movement of contradictions that will not have culminated in a final and completed synthesis. Analysis of the internal contexts and interrelations of these conceptions leads us to interpret them as the movement of concurrent misses — a radical change in the structure and the opening of its dialectics here has different resonances, caused by a different conception of the subject and the relationship between the work and the social structure — and also a failed meeting, whose connections have for the most part hitherto escaped the attention of literary studies and philosphy historians.

Třetí ediční stadium vydávání Máje K. H. Máchy

Author(s): Michal Kosák / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2018

This study examines critical editions of Máj by Karel Hynek Mácha in the period after the discovery of the poem manuscript in 1916. Hence it focuses primarily on publishing procedures in the ten editions (1919–1949) by František Krčma and the eleven editions (1936–1959) by Karel Janský, while also examining other important parallel editorial undertakings, editions from the previous period and editions that came out after the last critical edition in the Knihovna klasiků series (1959). This studie 213 exposition focuses primarily on how both prominent Mácha editors set out their conception of the chronology of both primary sources: the first printing (1836) and the poem manuscript. It subsequently analyses which method of working with both sources they developed from this conception, and it focuses on a detailed analysis of the editing process, i.e. on determining the phenomena which the editors considered to be errors within the text of the poem, their correction and what is known as the linguistic preparation of the text. The study shows developments in the approaches of both editors, the changes in the extent and method both sources were contaminated and in the application of the diplomatic approach, while also following the ongoing application of a methodologically different editing process method, which aimed to modernize and harmonize the published text. This process is observed within the context of the domestic discussion at that time on the extent and method for correcting the texts of the classics. The present description of changes in the text of critical editions of Máj is one of the bases for the forthcoming new edition of the poem in the Hybrid Scholarly Edition.

„Dobrá česká kniha“. Kulturní rada a autoregulační tendence v českém literárním prostoru v letech 1938 a 1939

Author(s): Kateřina Piorecká / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2018

This study observes the process whereby the Czech cultural scene was redefined during the first few months of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In an attempt to protect Czech culture and to preserve the autonomy of Czech institutions as proclaimed by the German occupiers, society deliberately undertook centralization and self-regulatory measures. The National Partnership (Národní souručenství), which 97% of the male population joined during spring 1939, was initiated as part of its internal policy by the Cultural Council, which had had programmatic continuity since November 1938. Under the “new conditions” it was meant to become the autonomous, proactive working and advisory centre for the National Partnership’s cultural and educational work. Although it had taken part in the organization of such spontaneous demonstrations as the second burial of Karel Hynek Mácha, it was soon arranging a number of promotional events in an attempt to centralize, control and regulate the cultural scene. In its cultural and political discourse it highlighted the topoi of the good Czech book, which became a symbol of resistance and a means for preserving national identity. The most successful promotional event used by the Cultural Council to take control of the entire spectrum of artistic and cultural life within the Protectorate was the December Czech Book Month organized in towns and rural areas. The preparations were strictly centralized and controlled, and it was only possible to exhibit books previously listed by the Cultural Council. “A good prame ny 239 Czech book” became a cult object, on the basis of which Protectorate society was newly defined, legitimizing it in the face of overbearing German culture and bolstering its resistance. The event also resulted in economic assistance to the graphic and book industries, while redefining the Czech literary scene and the totalitarization of Czech society.

Velká válka, velké naděje, velké pochybnosti. Smysly, emoce a komplikovaný patriotismus v deníku Zofie Nałkowské

Author(s): Paweł Rodak / Language(s): Czech Issue: 30/2018

The article describes the experience of World War I and the period just after the war (1914–1919) as written in the diary of prominent Polish novelist Zofia Nałkowska (1884–1954). For Nałkowska, World War I presents strong sensory experiences (new sounds and images that permeate domestic and other private spaces). At the same time, war reveals the truth about human life — a life full of cruelty —, creating a situation in which the collective expression of patriotism demands individual sacrifice. This article explores the tension in Nałkowska’s diary between what is collective and patriotic, on the one hand, and what is individual and private on the other (patriotism is a valuable aspect of the national ethos for Nałkowska, but at the same time she realizes that it can be a source of nationalistic and chauvinistic behaviours). Finally, the article shows Nałkowska’s critical attitude at the end of the war and the immediate post-war period, connected with the awareness that the regained independence will not solve all Polish problems.

Literární dystopie a pokusy o její vymezení ve světovém a českém kontextu

Author(s): Olga Pavlova / Language(s): Czech Issue: 30/2018

This article deals with anti-utopian and dystopian literature, development of the genre and attempts at its definition. The first part contains a description of attributes characteristic of the genre: newspeak, the petrified world, and the division of the world into two fields (Us vs. Them). The author then devotes attention to previous theoretical definitions of dystopia and anti-utopia, including an historical mapping of research in foreign, mainly English studies: works by George Woodcock, Fred Polak, Mark Hillegas, Krishan Kumar, Lyman Tower Sargent and others. The survey of research in the Czech academic field is based on texts by Milada Genčiová, Daniela Hodrová and Petr Hrtánek. In conclusion, the author describes the differences between anti-utopia and dystopia, their delimitation as specific genres, proceeding primarily from the theory of petrified worlds. She also stressess the importance of a political reading of the dystopian and anti-utopian literature based on the close relation between the real world and fiction in this genre.

Narativní časoprostor v rodových kronikách o Štilfridovi a Bruncvíkovi a o Meluzíně

Author(s): Jiří Koten / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2019

The paper focuses on the way in which time and space are constructed in Czech late-medieval dynastic chronicles (Chronicle of Stilfrid and Chronicle of Bruncvik and the Chronicle of Melusine). The interpretation is based on Bakhtin's chronotope theory, as well as on narratology, which has in recent years increasingly reflected upon the development of functions and forms in narratives from different historical periods. In the time of their appearance the analyzed texts introduced innovations in the concept on narrative time and space. They can be clearly observed in the represented perception of time, which began to demonstrate a higher level of mimesis. Narrators incorporated the chronicler's perception of time and provided thorough information about the exact timing of events. Space mimetism (forming of topography) is mainly achieved through personification (getting to know the foreign world, for example, is represented as a sexual relationship of knight Bruncvík with the virgins of Europe and Africa; one of the sisters of the maiden Melusine bears the name of Palestine etc.).

Ke zdrojům — inspirace „Manifestem“

Author(s): Matouš Jaluška / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2019

Naléhavé volání Evy von Contzen po medievisticky orientované diachronní naratologii vychází především z vědomí důležitosti vyprávění jakožto výsostně lidské aktivity. Nová badatelská orientace má způsobit návrat ke zkoumání této činnost jakožto způsobu sdílení společného světa mezi lidmi navzájem, jak vyplývá z její „tirády“ (rant), publikované v roce vydání Manifestu ve sborníku „miniaturních manifestů post/medievalismu“ Burn After Reading. Tam autorka prohlašuje, že literární vědci „ztratili zájem o literaturu jakožto příběh a nahradili jej vírou ve svou vlastní schopnost vytvářet příběhy nové“ (von contzen 2014: 110). Proto je třeba sáhnout zpět ke dřeni. Naději na „návrat k narativu a znovuobjevení vyprávění jakožto základní hybné síly v oblasti literatury“ lze snadno spojit s nástupem „postpostmoderní epochy“ a obratem od individualismu k různým komunitám a jejich základům, který s sebou tato doba nese (ibid.: 111). První část Burn After Reading ostatně ústí do proklamace: „Chceme společnou budoucnost“.

Komentář k „Manifestu“ — pět let poté

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech Issue: 4/2019

Když jsem před pěti lety psala článek „Proč potřebujeme naratologii středověku“, cítila jsem jak frustraci, tak naději. Právě jsem dopsala dizertaci o Skotském legendáři, sbírce životů svatých vzniklé ve Skotsku na sklonku 14. století, v níž jsem zaměřila na způsob, jakým jsou legendy vyprávěny. Zkoumala jsem zejména to, jak básník strategickým využíváním kategorií vyprávění, jako jsou čas, prostor, postavy, vypravěčský hlas a perspektiva zesiloval účinek vyprávění na publikum. Zabývám se anglickou středověkou literaturou, ale protože se mi akademického vzdělání dostalo v Německu, výrazně mě ovlivnily i ty metodologické a teoretické přístupy, které zatím mimo Německo nenacházely širší obecenstvo. Východiskem mi byla teorie vyprávění, která se těší silné tradici jak v německojazyčném, tak v anglo-americkém prostředí, avšak téměř výhradně v souvislosti s výzkumem románu či obecněji materiálu vzniklého po 17. století. Uvědomila jsem si, že jsem v dvojím smyslu izolovaná: zaprvé v medievistice, svém vlastním oboru, vyznačujícím se silnými mezinárodními vazbami, ale též slabou úlohou teorie vyprávění; zadruhé v teorii vyprávění samotné (tedy v oboru, který jsem jinde nazvala „mainstreamovou naratologií“ [srov. von contzen 2018]), do níž se naopak nehrnou medievisté a ve které se o historických aspektech výzkumu téměř nemluví.

Interpretace narativní fikce: kolik světů je zapotřebí?

Author(s): Petr Koťátko / Language(s): Czech Issue: 61/2020

The author continues in defending the view that the texts of narrative fiction direct our thought and imagination to the real world of our life: the storyworld is the state of the real world we are supposed to accept (in the as if mode) as actual. He argues that in interpreting fiction we do not project counterfactual scenarios or states of affairs into another world, construed for this purpose: instead, we project them into the real world via accepting them (in the as if mode) as facts of this world. This view is incompatible with the fictional worlds theory but admits the application of the apparatus of the possible worlds theory (provided that we accept Saul Kripke’s interpretation of possible worlds as “total ways the world might have been”). The author confronts his position with the views recently presented by Stacie Friend and replies to a new counter-example designed to show that the identification of a storyworld with the real world can be blocked by an explicit metafictional pronouncement.

Posel, překladatel, interpret? Emil Saudek a Otokar Březina: mezi překladem a exegezí

Author(s): Josef Vojvodík / Language(s): Czech Issue: 62/2020

The paper examines the relationship between the poetic works of Otokar Březina and its translations and interpretations by Emil Saudek. The aim is to put Saudek’s interpretations of Březina into the context of mysticism, neomytologism and neovitalism of the early 20th century modernism, the philosophical background of which Saudek knew very well. It can be said that in Saudek’s translations, criticism, and readings of Březina an ideal symbiosis of a translator and/as interpreter.

Svatoňův „velký příběh“ komparatistiky

Author(s): Tomáš Glanc / Language(s): Czech Issue: 62/2020

Na Svatoňově uvažování o komparatistice je příznačné, že je autor začíná kriticky, pochybnostmi o jejím smyslu. Konstatuje „omezování komparatistiky na evropských a amerických univerzitách během 20. století“ a zná i příčinu tohoto „zániku“ — komparatistický vektor se stal samozřejmým, a tím ztratil přinejmenším část svého raison d’être: „Zřetel k „mezinárodnímu“ kontextu se stal standardní výbavou historického studia literatury.“ Tuto metodologickou implozi, jejíž časové těžiště shledává v devadesátých letech 20. století, kdy se komparatistika z určitého úhlu pohledu začala jevit jako zbytečná, považuje Svatoň za mnohem podstatnější než ideologické spory, v jejichž průběhu představitelé komparatistiky po druhé světové válce zápolili v SSSR s obviněními z mechanického formalismu. A derivátem těchto tažení byl jak známo i osud komparatistiky v Československu: roku 1945 byl Václav Černý jmenován profesorem srovnávací a obecné literatury na FF UK, roku 1951 byla katedra komparatistiky zrušena.

O jednom odloženém projektu

Author(s): Hana Kosáková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 62/2020

A note on the manuscript of the history of new russian literature

Bibliografie Vladimíra Svatoně

Author(s): / Language(s): Czech Issue: 62/2020

Bibliography.

Politické čtení — úvodní slovo

Author(s): Petr A. Bílek / Language(s): Czech Issue: 34/2020

Příspěvky shrnuté v tomto bloku se věnují politickému čtení. Jejich výchozí verzebyly sepsány pro dvě pracovní konference konané v rámci projektu Joint Seed, propojujícího Univerzitu Karlovu a Univerzitu Curych. První z nich proběhla v Prazev prosinci 2019, druhou, naplánovanou do Curychu na polovinu března 2020, již zasáhla právě se rodící vlna epidemie, takže z původního programu se realizovala jenjeho část.

The Outside of the Text

Author(s): Jan Jerzy Sowa / Language(s): English Issue: 34/2020

This article presents an argument against attempts to exclude the political perspective from the reading and reception of literature. Departing from the failed afrmation of radical autonomy of the Symbolic undertaken by poststructuralist philosophy (mainly Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida) it argues for inclusion of the Real in the process of reading since it is always operational in the process of writing. Without going back to the metaphysics of presence, it puts forward an understanding of the Real that departs from the concept of disclosure (ἀλήθεια), but aims at a more negative and dialectical understanding of the Real as the force that disrupts and invades discourse in unwanted yet unavoidable ways. Edward Said’s reading of literary classics, which traces the link between culture and imperialism, is provided as an example of such a political reading of literature.

Co je realismus ve fikci (některé koncepce v angloamerické literární vědě)

Author(s): Michal Charypar / Language(s): Czech Issue: 36/2021

This study provides analysis and summaries of some of the leading theoretical conceptions of realism in literature in its relation to the ‘real world’, as formulated by American and English critics 1960 to present, including Lillian R. Furst, Harry E. Shaw, George Levine, Michael Riffaterre, Nelson Goodman, and Hayden White — introducing some of them to the Czech milieu for the first time. While several are formulated in clearly apologetic terms, representing realism as an important poetics on par with others (e.g. modernism), most of the theorists here attempt either to rid realism of its dependence on direct mimesis and highlight its creative potential, or else emphasize the realists’ ontological claim to truth in art. In its second half, the study also deals with the main problems of literary history that are linked to, or associated with, these theories, namely, with so-called ‘modern’ realism from its historical beginnings (Erich Auerbach), with the problematic relation between realism and the historical novel, and with the internal classification of 19th century realism and/or plurality of realist poetics.

O historické fikci a jejích žánrech

Author(s): Anna Schubertová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 64/2021

From the Romance to the Novel and Back Again by Ladislav Nagy is dedicated to the topic of historical prose. The author analyses the theoretical debate about the relationship between fictional and historical writing, and he also examines the generic development of English historical fiction. In the passages dedicated to the narrative aspects of history, Nagy offers a persuasive criticism of Hayden White’s distinction between fictional and historical writing, and sees an alternative to it in Paul Ricœur’s theory of narrative. In the second line of argumentation Nagy presents a thesis that historical prose has developed from the romance genre, and through a short diversion to novel it returns to romance again. He analyses Scott’s novel Waverley, which famously defines itself against romance, as a romance, and he uses the same term for postmodern historical fiction. This thesis seems less plausible to me as Nagy’s definition of both novel and romance genres is problematic.

V labyrintu struktur a funkcí Herty Schmidové

Author(s): Aleš Merenus / Language(s): Czech Issue: 6/2013

O literatuře aneb Hledání průsečíku otázek

Author(s): Ondřej Sládek / Language(s): Czech Issue: 6/2013

Mezi skrytým a konvenčním. Kenneth Burke a teorie symbolu

Author(s): Martin Švantner,Marianna Abrahamyan / Language(s): Czech Issue: 40/2022

This article discusses Kenneth Burke’s theory of the symbol, which considers the use of the sign as a specifically human activity associated with the formation of meaning. In Burke’s view, the symbol is a meaning-making device that can influence human action and thoughts, and therefore represents the key to understanding the nature of human communication. In this article, Burke’s ideas are compared to other sign-symbol theories — namely, the semiotics of Umberto Eco and Juri Lotman, Charles Sanders Peirce’s semeiotics, as well as Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms —, with analysis on the way each of these theorists defines the nature of the symbol and its conventional acceptation, principle of identification, and the characteristics of the symbolisation process itself.