A Late Humanist Treatise on the Origin of the Bohemians, the Academic Polemics and Their Potential to Perform the Other: De origine Bohemorum et Slavorum by Johannes Matthias à Sudetis

• Authors: Storchová Lucie
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Beside an editorial note and the edition itself, the article includes a study focusing on three analytical levels. The first of them presents the Latin humanist tract textually, i.e. how it was determined by a formalized narrative mode (so-called ‘writing in excerpts’ derived from ancient authorities which were shared in the community of scholars). The second level investigates the argumentation developed in the text – in this concrete instance, a historical account of the origins of the Slavs and the Bohemian tribe from Transcarpathian region, along with its ideological background that is treated according to the recent concept of humanist ‘fight for honour’ by C. Hirschi. Finally, the author concentrates on the level of further texts which appeared thanks to interpretations of Matthias treatise and provoked – in close connection with the abovementioned formal and content-based levels – an outstanding and unique humanist polemic. It draws attention not only to performative techniques of invective, but also to period discourses of nation as well as strategies for institutionally defining the very possibility of writing that were linked to the categories of ‘order’ and symbolic capital (here with a discussion of academic titles).

Keywords

EN

humanism; edition; nation; invective

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Comeniana (International review of Comenius studies and early modern intellectual history)
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 22-23
• Pages: 149-206

Contributors

author

Storchová Lucie

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