Literární historie jako reflexe paměti a hodnoty (se zřetelem k slovanským literaturám)
Literary History as a Reflection of Memory and Value (with Regard to Slavonic Literatures)

Author(s): Ivo Pospíšil
Subject(s): Cultural history, Studies of Literature
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: revitalization of the theory of literary history; “new literary history”; danger of shallowness and unsubstantiality of contemporary histories of literature;
Summary/Abstract: The author of the present article deals with the revitalization of literary history since the beginning of the 21st century in contrast to the prevalence of the synchronous functional approach in the first half of the 20th century. The contemporary attempts at the “new literary history” are regarded as reflecting the boom of fashionable and very often shallow, unsubstantial discourses expressing nearly with the same words the traditional concepts. The necessity of the deeply conceived theory of literary history predicted in the 1930s by René Wellek must be accompanied by the practical, representative, real histories of national literatures or even supranational complexes, such as general literature, related literatures or even world literature. He also mentions the reflexive and appellative function of art. He demonstrates the ambiguity of literary texts and variability of its readers’ and critics’ interpretations determined by the suppositional textual strata and their links to reality, but also by the modifications of reality itself. In the end, he gives several examples of the histories of national literatures, mainly Slavonic/Russian in the Czech environment reflecting the Czech cultural background and experience stressing the importance of individual histories preferring them to team works which often lose their own unrepeatable faces.

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