Česká historizující próza mezi romantismem a realismem. Rekonstrukce historické právní kauzy Henyka z Valdštejna v povídce Karla Sabiny Osudná kniha
Czech historical fiction between romanticism and realism (The reconstruction of a historical legal cause of Henyk Wallenstein in Karel Sabina’s tale The Fatal Book)

Summary/Abstract: The study attempts at two complementary goals: 1) It discusses the principal character of historical themes in 19th century fiction and strives to give a new specification of realistic historicism based on traditional research on romantic historicism. At this point, the study concludes that Czech realistic prose-writers in treating historical themes mostly used techniques established already by romanticism. The development of the romantic model of historical fiction cannot therefore be defined by absolute criteria (like, e.g., the presence / absence of concrete means or techniques), but only by means of relative criteria (clearly higher / lower extent of using a single means or technique, its central / peripheral position in the semantic structure of a text, and so on). 2) The theory mentioned above is applied here on a short-story Osudná kniha. Historická povídka (A Fateful Book. Historical story, 1866) by Karel Sabina. This short-story uses a fully literary form for processing a 17th century legal cause of a Czech nobleman and a printer Henyk of Wallenstein, involving an illegal publication of a politically subversive book, and sticks tightly to the historical legal documentation. At the same time, the study gives evidence of blending of literary and scientific discourses in Osudná kniha that is based on comparing this short-story with Sabina´s long scientific article regarding the same topic, that was published in 1867.

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