A Territorial History of Central European Literature as a Literary and Cultural Legacy of the Habsburg Monarchy Cover Image

Terytorialna historia literatury środkowoeuropejskej jako spuścizny literackiej i kulturowej monarchii Habsburgów
A Territorial History of Central European Literature as a Literary and Cultural Legacy of the Habsburg Monarchy

Author(s): Lenka Németh Vítová
Subject(s): Review, General Reference Works
Published by: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: Putna; Central Europe; Austria-Hungary; history of literature; memory

Summary/Abstract: Martin C. Putna in 2018 published Obrazy z kulturních dějin Střední Evropy [Images from the Cultural History of Central Europe], in which he presents a spectacular panorama of the multiculturalism, multilingualism, and multiconfessionalism of the individual regions of Central Europe (which he understands as the cultural legacy of Austria-Hungary) in order to sketch their "histories of ideas" that allow for a fuller reflection on the past and thus for building a future based on these (forgotten or sometimes suppressed) experiences. By proposing a territorial history of literature, the author gives a new direction to the closed-circle discussion of the construct of Central Europe: the essayistic images - despite their fragmentary and subjective readings - are clearly a step towards treating literature and culture as a medium of memory, counting on the causal effect of the memory they retain (after Astrid Erll genitivus objectivus).

  • Issue Year: 29/2021
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 443-453
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Polish