This article is concerned with several different concepts of literary history. It concludes that a multidisciplinary approach spanning a number of different media is now often used in synthetic histories of literature. It is no longer possible to write a history of literature in terms of a single, unified narrative or as a text governed by a single overarching idea. One must now use a multiplicity of approaches: literature as an autonomous evolutionary process, literature as part of cultural history, literature in the transnational context, and literature in the comparative context. The series of literary histories published by Harvard University Press (A New History of French Literature, A New History of German Literature, and A New Literary History of America) is particularly thought provoking in this respect since these works consider literature within a broad cultural and social context. The point of departure for each chapter is a literary or a social and/or political event. The History of the Literary Cultures of East-Central Europe, of which three volumes have been published so far (2004, 2006, and 2007) is unconventional and noteworthy. Czech literary history has, traditionally, struggled with national ideology and its prejudices. After the Communist takeover of 1948, this was superseded by Marxist ideology, which was similarly limiting. The article analyzes three recent histories of Czech literature, which have tried to overcome these boundaries. Dějiny české literatury (A History of Czech Literature) by Hana Voisine-Jechová was published in Czech in 2005 (and in French as Histoire de la littérature tchèque, in 2001). Although the author says she is using a comparative approach, her work contains a large number of mistakes, inaccuracies, and teleological and causal constructions. The third volume of Schamschula’s voluminous Geschichte der tschechischen Literatur (A History of Czech Literature, 2004) is much more successful. This work covers the period from 1918 to the present day. Schamschula manifests much greater literary-historical knowledge than Voisine-Jechová, but his approach is marred by an anti-Czech bias. What is more, Schamschula’s and Voisine-Jechová’s treatment of Czech literature after 1968 is quite inadequate. In many respects, these shortcomings have been rectified by the extensive, four volume project Dějiny české literatury 1945–1989 (A History of Czech Literature, 1945–89, vols I–II , 2007, vols II–IV, 2008), a collective work produced by the Prague based Institute of Czech Literature under Pavel Janoušek. This work uses a much broader definition of the concept of literature (taking into account, for example, the cultural context, the mass media, and rock and folk music). There are inaccuracies and problems even in this work, but on the whole this history has managed to overcome the teleological concept and some of the traditional constraints of Czech literary history.
It is difficult to imagine the history of literature devoid of such mode of research expression as monography. It is still a popular form of synthetic expressions (after all the history of literature is condemned to synthesis). At the same time, however, a literary historian can base his actions less and less often on the theoretical-literary reflection. What vectors could turn us today towards a contemporary reading of literary texts – the reading which is far not only from ingenuous naivety but also from dangerous confidence in the power of individual research concepts? Some contemporary postulates of reading ethics give answer to these questions. They induce us to be distant towards any theoretical-literary or ideological prejudices and hence to the responsibility for the research method and the language describing a work of art. It seems that a thought which returns in the reflection of literary studies about the subjectivity of reading, about the necessity of considering the sphere of values in the process of reading (which modern ethics of reading calls for) induces to turn towards interpretation, return to the author and to axiology.
This text is a kind of re-reading of a collection of the studies published in 1966 within the Litteraria edition as its 9th volume under the title 'Literary Avant-gardes'. From the general point of view it is an important change in reception of this period in the history of literature, since the 1950s in the Czechoslovak literary study were ill-omened with indifference and refusal of the avant-garde. The authors of these papers chose the structural approach as an opposite to the critique of the ideas, which dominated in the contemporary literary studies. From the particular point of view it is an anachronism, because these literary scholars developed the principles of structural analysis, based by Jan Mukarovský in the 1930s and 1940s, to whom this book is inscribed. It is not necessary to mark that this anachronism was caused by the political and social situation in Czechoslovakia. The book is a precious asset to the Czech and Slovak literary studies.
The paper, which was originally a talk at a conference in November 1974, is an attempt at a problematization of a tension at the crossroads of the history of literature and the history of ideas. The authoress focuses on demonstrating the antagonism of these disciplines, especially across time. She makes an assumption that a work of art, the source for the history of literature, is the expression of incommunicable reality that it tries to communicate. Any interpretation of a work of art, even a successful one, affirms only itself and shows that the work is beyond the grasp of it. The history of ideas can not be of help in understanding of literature, as the truth inherent in art remains unreachable for ideas. The unit of time in the history of literature is different than in the realm of ideas. The time of ideas is simply the historical time, understood as 'the long duration.' The time of literature is composed of 'events,' 'personalities,' 'works,' especially masterpieces. Besides, as an indispensable feature of literature at the forefront we see the esthetical or artistic organization of the work of art; what is important is the innovation and the point of view of the work, or its idiolect.
Theory of fictional worlds has been proven a useful tool in modern narrative semantics. Based on the theory of communication, and thus being able to reflect the creation as well as the reception of literary works, the semantics of fictional worlds my be considered an important tool of inquiry literary history. One of the most challenging tasks of literary history remains the demarcation of literariness, which is connected with language and aesthetic function of the literary artwork in the structuralist discourse. The study tries examine how the fictional worlds semantics meets the specific preconditions and needs of literary historical investigation.
(Slovak title: Literarne pojmoslovie Bohuslava Tablica II. Pojem poetske umeni a jeho varianty v kontexte Tablicovych literarnohistorickych reflexii). Bohuslav Tablic used several variants of terms to determine poetic activity. He characterized ability of authors to write in verse form and according to the poetic rules. That way he depicted poetic activity and distinguished it from the other types of literary works. He used the terms not in perfect systematic order that is why their distinctive features are not always understandable. Following the context of his work, we think that he also determined the types of poetic techniques. He distinguished inner structure of verse according to two principles: 1. an organisation of the poetic text, according to the quantitative metre, 2. some parts of metre were organized according to strict scheme, based on the rhythm and intonation of syllabic verse. The quality of poetic text was not generated from the quality of the poetic art of authors and the quality of poetic technique. Following the poetic rules strictly was not for him an inevitable condition to meet the taste of readers.
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.