Generace v literární vědě, jejich sláva a traumata
Generations in Literary Criticism, Their Fame and Traumas

Author(s): Ivo Pospíšil
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature, Social history, Recent History (1900 till today), History of Communism
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: fame and traumas of literary criticism; Czech; Ukrainian; and Russian literary critics in post-Stalinist period (the period of thaw; Brezhnevism/neo-Stalinism; glasnost and perestrojka;
Summary/Abstract: The author of the present article deals with the lives of several generations of literary scholars and critics in the Czech, Ukrainian and Russian environment in hard times of Stalinism and post-Stalinist periods (the periods of thaw, glasnost and perestroika, after the fall of the U.S.S.R.) covering the time span from the 1950s up to the present day. The main aim of this treatise consists in the comparison of all the three cultural and scholarly environment under approximately the same regimes, the analysis of the ideological impact interfering in the intrinsic methodology of literary criticism at the material of the memoirs of several Czech, Ukrainian, and Russian literary scholars and critics. Though the working conditions of literary criticism in all the mentioned countries were not favourable, the critics have more or less successfully overcome various ideological obstacles and reached the scholarly results which cannot be ignored even nowadays; due to their quality, the contemporary critics cannot do without them. The memoir texts written by two outstanding Czech specialists in Russian studies, by an Ukrainian literary scholar and by a Russo-Ukrainian literary critic demonstrate the complicated social and working conditions, the confused functioning of “thick“ literary journals in Soviet times during the thaw period and after 1970. The author of the present article comes to the conclusion that every scholarly generation has its fame and traumas; it has always depended on the quality of its work, creativity and vital energy and on all the social and political obstacles so that the results of scholarly work might preserve its inspiring value worth attention for both present and forthcoming generations.

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