This article is a response to Daniela Tinková’s study Enlightenment as ‘vernacularization of knowledge’. In the first part we comment on the positive aspects of Tinková’s conception of the history of the Enlightenment, but also on the lack of clarity concerning the nature of knowledge as both a component of cultural transfer and the outcome of that process. The second part changes perspective, focussing on ‘the transfer of Enlightenment’ and the ‘radiation’ of Enlightenment from the Czech Lands to surrounding regions of the Habsburg monarchy, especially Galicia. For this reason the Czech Lands assumed a regional hegemony in many areas of administration and economic and intellectual life. We also attempt to explain the motivations for accepting ‘Enlightenment knowledge’ while relativizing the power asymmetries in these processes.
The paper deals with the stories representing the suicide of Prague (German writing) authors, Christian Heinrich Spieß, Johann Friedrich Ernst Albrecht and Reactions to the Wertheriads, which document the divergent development of cutures of subjectivity (Reckwitz) in Central Europe in the age of Enlightenment. The first part of the paper reconstructs the influence of the radical preromantism and Sturm und Drang, namely The Sorrows of Young Werther in the Bohemian Lands. Next, It compares the Stories written by Spieß and Albrecht with Werther as a paradigmatic text and its model of Subjectivity. It focuses to the Story Die neue Sapfo written by Spieß in 1779, which documents the genesis of his later stories and the development of the conception of the role of the subject., Václav Smyčka., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
This study examines changes in narrative approaches in Czech, Moravian and (German-written) Silesian belles lettres from 1770-1790. In its examination of historical poetics and changes in narrative methods, it draws on the structuralist studies of Lubomír Doležal (his "narrative text transformation" model) and Daniela Hodrová (fictive novel vs. reality novel). Instead of the idea that prose evolves in relation to a fixed "linguistic substrate" in an immanent, autonomous way, the author inclines to the notion of a plurality of poetic codes on various linguistic levels (from stylistic registers, "narrative methods" and narrative structures to individual genres and the comprehensive aesthetic that shapes entire epochs). The study starts with an outline the socio-historical background to the emergence of literary periodicals in the Czech Lands in the early 1770s and their authors’ publishing strategies. It then considers the transformational impact these periodicals had on the literary prose of the day. The third part examines how the belles lettres of literary periodicals reacted to impulses from Enlightenment poetics such as the sentimentalism of Laurence Sterne and the Sturm und Drang movement, with illustrative interpretations of the novellas Der Philosoph in der Suppe (The Philosopher in the Soup) by Johann Ferdinand Opitz, Die neue Sapfo (The New Sappho) by Christian Heinrich Spiess and Der sonderbare Kupler (The Peculiar Pimp) by Josef Herbst and Josef Kirpal., Václav Smyčka., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy
Starting with the traditional dichotomy of two views of the relation between criticism and art - "criticism as art" and "criticism based on detachment" - this study seeks to show both standpoints to be part of a single complex of issues and tensions associated with the functional differentiation within literary communication at the turn of 18th and 19th century. This approach is based on Niklas Luhmann’s system theory, applied (with something of a twist) by Siegfried Schmidt to literature. After introducing the problem of functional differentiation within the literary system in Bohemia, the study presents many different historical conceptions of the relation of art and criticism observable in discussions at the turn of 18th and 19th century in Bohemia. I then focus on the notion of "genius" in these discussions, which played an important role in the development of the concept of "criticism as art". In the following three parts, the study investigates the differentiation of critical praxis: the genesis of "artistic criticism" characterized by hermeneutics and its form-reflecting approach, and the ongoing usage of artistic genres in criticism. The last part focuses on a specific critical genre of the period, the satirical vision, and its transformation as a consequence of the differentiation of the literary system., Václav Smyčka., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy