Literární autorita jako významný společenský fenomén období druhé republiky

• Authors: Igor Fic

Title variants

EN

Authority in Literature as an Important Social Phenomenon in the Second Republic

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

In this article, the author considers Jaroslav Med’s Literární život ve stínu Mnichova (1938–1939) (Literary life in the shadow of the Munich Agreement, 1938–39) in the context of reflections on the relationship between what it is to be Czech and what it is to be European, the role of national myths in the search for Czech collective identity and the bolstering of that identity, and the tension between individual existence, national history, and a universalist historical framework. Med’s concept is, in his opinion, constructed with an eye to the dichotomy of the universalistic and particularistic national conceptions of history and culture, from which the norms were derived for the cultural, intellectual, and ethical orientations of interwar Czechoslovakia. In a space thus defined, Med then explores the literary life of the first and second Czechoslovak republics, in particular literary journalism, in order to trace the characteristic value-orientations and standpoints of the principal literary circles ranging from left to right on the political spectrum and their leading figures, especially Roman Catholic writers, in connection with, among other things, the decisive events of the period. The author of the article praises Med’s literary-historical, or cultural-historical, approach, which draws also on social-science research, his knowledge of the facts, his smooth, comprehensible style, and the moral ethos that comes through in his writing.

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2012
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 292-297
• Document type: DISCUSSION PAPER

Contributors

author

Igor Fic

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic