CEEOL - Browse Subjects Result

We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.

Od naivity k absurditě K úvahám Vladimíra Boreckého o komičnu

Author(s): Miloš Ševčík / Language(s): Czech Issue: 67/2023

The study deals with the main features of Vladimír Borecký’s general theory of the comic. First, it introduces Borecký’s conception of the structuring features of the comic. It then examines the specificity of the main configurations of the comic that Borecký discusses, i.e. naivety, irony, humour, and absurdity. The study highlights Borecký’s conception of the position of these configurations in the ontogenetic development of the individual and in cultural development. The study also compares Borecký’s thoughts with the conceptions of other theorists of the comic. On the one hand, with James Sully’s genetic and pluralistic conception of laughter and the comic, and on the other hand, with Louis Cazamian’s conception of humour. In conclusion, the study shows that in both Borecký’s and Cazamian’s reflections one can trace a tendency to conceive of absurdity as the ultimate manifestation of the comic.

More...

Komika bez vtipu, smích bez důvodu

Author(s): Robert Kanócz / Language(s): Czech Issue: 67/2023

The article examines the relationship between the comic, laughter and philosophy in the work of Vladimír Borecký. Borecký denies any essential link between laughter and the comic. Nevertheless, he had, not only theoretically, devoted himself to both a specific comic and a specific laughter — in short: to a comic without jokes and to laughter without any reason — and he was interested in the relationship between the two. A comic without jokes can only be achieved through demanding, even ascetic practice, which draws significantly from philosophy. The path to the comic without jokes is also the path to philosophy or quasi-philosophy without knowledge, even if it takes the form of “knowledge of not knowing”. The absence of jokes and knowledge does not imply the absence — but neither the presence — of laughter. But then, any laughter is always a mysterious gift from a divine dimension. In almost all essential points, Borecký is inspired by phenomenology, especially by Martin Heidegger, but also by Eugen Fink. At the same time, following Gilles Deleuze, he tries to create an absurd-comic variant of Heidegger’s non-metaphysical philosophy.

More...

Přijde gestapák na inspekci

Author(s): Ondřej Vinš / Language(s): Czech Issue: 67/2023

The aim of the following article is to define the concepts of the comic and (dark) humour employing the work of Vladimír Borecký, a Czech scholar and author of the typology of the comic. The text focuses on various features and manifestations of dark humour in selected Czech anecdotes from WWII.

More...

Co si Vladimír Borecký poznat vůbec nepřál

Author(s): Jaromír Typlt / Language(s): Czech Issue: 67/2023

The text captures various misunderstandings that arose when the living author, František Novák from Lomnice nad Popelkou, became the subject of Vladimír Borecký’s professional interest in 2002. While Borecký was a respected scholar in the field of cultural studies, Novák’s linguistic and historical theories remained mere scientific nonsense, amusing from a certain point of view, but completely unacceptable. Borecký, however, did not want to ridicule Novák; on the contrary, he was able to read his texts as an expression of playfulness, and he placed their effect in the highest degree of the comic, which he described as “absurdity”, questioning all the certainties of our knowledge. But Novák became convinced that his groundbreaking scientific theories were as yet misunderstood.

More...

Jak na (literární) antisemitismus? Modelová studie: antisemitské reprezentace u Františka Sokola-Tůmy

Author(s): Vít Strobach,Lukáš Borovička / Language(s): Czech Issue: 01/2017

In this study, the authors connect the perspective of a social historian with that of a literary one. On one particular example (the works of František Sokol-Tůma), they show the potential of examining not only the inner semantic structure of a text, but also its relations to the more general social, cultural and political contexts. Building upon the basic work of Étienne Balibar, the authors hold that anti-Semitism (and racism in general) has broadly socially manifested itself not in strictly hierarchized, caste-structured societies, but paradoxically in those that claimed at least a formal principle of equality. In other words in such contexts where the discourse of social recognition on the basis of equality among people had asserted or was asserting itself while having to legitimize the obvious sharp social discrepancies. This explains why the notions of race and racism were important to Czech, German and other nationalists during the mobilization and political campaigns, and especially in the last phases of forming national movements, in asserting the sovereignty of a national state and then during its establishment and also destabilization. In Sokol-Tůma’s novel pentalogy V záři milionů (In The Blaze of Millions, 1922), the core threads of the anti-Semitic ideology are woven into a complex semantic net, which loses its ambiguity in the gradually unleashing narrative and becomes clear and understandable, even to the most “simple” reader. It is this orientation towards the “common people” that justifies the claim that the text does not leave any “clusters of ideas” to be “dissolved in a poetical play of reflection” or to be “left open”. Therefore, the pentalogy fulfills the criteria of literary anti-Semitism formulated by Mona Körte. From our point of view, however, each such analysis needs to be preceded by a precise and detailed analysis of the semantic structure of a given text and the way such text has been linked to the larger threads of the more general social, cultural and political contexts.

More...

Realismus a dekadence jako „nákaza“ v dobové řeči o literatuře 19. století

Author(s): Jana Vrajová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2023

The aim of this paper is not to analyze the thematization of diseases (whether specific or general) or contagion expressed in literary form, but to explore the ways in which the discourse of contemporary literary criticism applied imagery associated with disease to descriptions of shifting literary norms in conjunction with changing cultural and social paradigms of the time.

More...

Obraz cholery v české populární literatuře počátku 20. století

Author(s): Martin Tichý,Jana Cindlerová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2023

This paper focuses on the refl ection of the cholera outbreak in Eastern and Central Europe after 1907, as observable in Czech media, especially popular literature. The discourse of cholera is a discourse of panic. The newspapers described the disease and its symptoms in great detail, but at the same time aimed to calm the readers down. The panic caused by the outbreak was also a prominent motif in humorous and satirical works. This theme, of course, brought no innovations to the genre, but that does not proclude its impact on readers. The cholera panic was generally ridiculed in such works as it is seen as a disruption of the status quo. Their authors perceived a glaring contrast between an exaggerated fear of disease and the principles of common sense. This common sense should guarantee a rudimental, self-explanatory understanding of the world, and therefore safety amid dangerous threats. The motif of disease serves, predictably, as a means of confirmation of certain stereotypes about the proper ways of living.

More...

Empatie a symbióza jako nově akcentované hodnoty v současné české literatuře pro děti a mládež

Author(s): Milena Šubrtová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

The study deals with interpretations of works of contemporary Czech literature for children and youth (Markéta Pilátová: Bába Bedla; Olga Stehlíková: Mojenka) in which empathy and symbiosis play an important axiological, formative and emotional function. From the awareness of the belonging of man as an individual and as a species in the context of natural events arises in these works the emphasis on co-responsibility for the preservation of biodiversity and the questioning of educational values traditionally derived from anthropocentric philosophy. At the same time, the depiction of nature as a host system and the depiction of environmental problems caused by human recklessness and ignorance go beyond the usual scientifically conceived natural science or activation framework. It becomes a metaphorical parallel to the life cycle of an individual from birth to death, leading to his self-awareness. The study, combining the procedures of literary analysis with the psychology of the relationship to nature, asks whether a new geneological subtype of so-called „ecoliterature“ is developing within the intentional literature for children and youth, which is not defined by the compositional procedures and means used, but by how it represents theoretical concept of nature, culture and man based on familiarization with the ontic conflict of culture with nature.

More...

Implikovaný autor a čtenář(i) jako spiklenci: Jak Hledá se hvězda cílí na různé typy čtenářů

Author(s): Jana Segi Lukavská / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

The study is devoted to interpreting Lenka Brodecka’s “adventurous fairy tale crime story” TheSearch for a Star (Hledá se hvězda, 2015). Combining crime fiction and other genres, the book invites a different kind of reading than classical detective stories. The aim of this study is twofold. Firstly, it highlights selected textual strategies conducted by the narrator, which open the book to two different types of readers – novice and expert. Secondly, it demonstrates how the genre syncretism of the prose is reflected in various narrative strategies as well as in the key motif of the Star. As will be argued, the story should be read neither as a fairy tale, in which good triumphs over evil, nor as a detective story, revealing the truth about an ingeniously committed crime and the violator of the order of the fictional world. The issue of what is good (and whether parents necessarily do what is best for children) is problematized here and handed over for assessment to the reader, who also has the opportunity to make an alliance with the narrator and thus become “smarter” than the detectives. The conceptual framework for the interpretation consists of the concepts of focalization and implied addressees.

More...

Životní hodnoty v prózách pro děti a mládež jiřího Stránského, půl století od jejich vzniku

Author(s): Magdaléna Lípová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

The article examines Jiri Stransky’s work for children and youth from the perspective of the life values that the author emphasizes in his prose. It analyses the texts that Stransky sent to his children in letters from a communist prison. The article follows two lines: on the one hand, there are fairytales for Stransky’s younger daughter Klara (later published in the children’s books Stories for little Klara/Povídačky pro Klárku and Stories for my sun/Povídačky pro moje slunce), and on the otherhand, an adventure story for his older son Martin (a novel for youth Pearl Mussels/Perlorodky). He finds specifics and intersections in life values and moral messages that Stransky conveys to children of two different age groups through stories of a personal tone and follows the development of the value hierarchy over time. The paper also analyses Stransky’s last prose for children, A Rain Stone/O Dešťovém kameni, which was written more than forty years after the first fairy tales. It pays attention to Stransky’s observations on the subject of values in published interviews (Libuše Koubská: If you can make someone happy, you must/Můžeš-li udělat radost, musíš and Jan Lukeš: A Heartfighter/Srdcerváč). Almost half a century after the creation of the first stories dedicated to children,the article raises questions about the current need for Jiri Stransky’s message of values for today’s society.

More...

Zobrazení současné rodiny a její hodnotové proměny (nad některými prózami českých autorek)

Author(s): Aneta Bartoníková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

The study is a reflection of selected original works by contemporary Czech authors who have depicted the family in prose for children and youth in the last two decades, as it continues to be an important part of the social space in which a person moves. The prevalence of dysfunctional families unsettles children and is naturally reflected in the current thematic structure of literary narratives and relation to non-literary reality. In the selected stories, the feelings of alienation of parents and children, failure of partnership and family forms, divorced families headed by a woman, the position of children in plural families are captured with the hope that family and parental love does not have to disappear and genuine interest in the other person due to illness or death does not disappear.

More...

Narativní empatie v útěku Kryšpína N. Ivony Březinové

Author(s): Filip Komberec / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

The article deals with narrative empathy as an important phenomenon in the sense of sharing someone else’s feelings and perspective, in a literary, social and educational context. We briefly outline the context of Ivona Březinová’s work and other texts related to the topic of bullying in children’s and youth literature. We introduce the concept and techniques of narrative empathy, paying special attention to the expression of emotions. We analyze the procedures involved in narrative empathy in The Escape of Kryšpín N. An important role is played, among other things, by the confrontation of the main character’s self-concept and perception by other characters, the expression of emotions through showing, and the combination of contemporary and retrospective narration.

More...

Trojí stav žen ve staročeské literatuře

Author(s): Lucie Machalová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

Due to the expansion of the old Czech literary production during the 14th century, the Luxembourg era in the Czech lands is characterized by a large number of literary monuments. While creating their texts, medieval authors followed established rules which were reflected not only in the individual literary genres but also in the types of characters depicted. The study focuses on women and the possible ways of describing them, all with emphasis on virgins, wives, and widows. For these categories, external and internal characteristics are examined, while the characters' appearance or activity in the plot is not omitted.

More...

Předmluvy a dedikace v české postilografii z let 1592–1620

Author(s): Lubomír Šalamoun / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

Our paper focuses on the prefaces in Czech humanist postilography from 1592 to 1620 by Martin Filadelf Zámrský, Jakub Wujek of Węgrowiec, Blažej Borovský of Borovany, Vojtěch Šebestián Scipio Berlička, Jan Kapita (2nd ed.), Jiří Dikast, Václav Slovacius, and Jakub Petrozelín Kunštátský. Two approaches for the elaboration have been selected; the first approach, primarily oriented towards the formalised aspect of text construction, concerns the arrangement of texts using recommendations from preaching theory, describing the differences between texts introduced with dedications and texts addressing the reader. The second approach, using literary theoretical premises, analyses the way the person of the "dedicatee" is formed. The article includes a brief characterisation of the elaborated prefaces and dedications.

More...

Národní klasik nebo klasický národovec? : "Tausch" u Aloise Jiráska a Hanse Watzlika

Author(s): Mirek Němec / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

Based on detailed analyses of the short stories "To the Germans" (1889) by Alois Jirásek and "The Road Home" (1925) (Heimweg) by Hans Watzlik, the study compares the persuasive factors leading to the formation of the concept of citizenship at the time of culminating nationalisation of society. It is based on the assumption of transcultural overlaps, as both stories thematise the socalled 'Tauš' or 'Handl'. This practice of exchanging children within Czech-German society may have led to bilingualism and reciprocal knowledge of the other Bohemian culture, while at the same time shaping personality. Both short stories end tragically with the death of the protagonists. Despite the many analogies and similarities found, a shift in the scales of value is nevertheless evident. This significantly differentiates the messages of both texts.

More...

Topinkovo souznění aneb Nacházení francouzských stop v tvorbě Miloslava Topinky

Author(s): Markéta Polách Balonová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

Miloslav Topinka's artistic work has been strongly associated with the francophone environment since its beginnings in 1965. Miloslav Topinka acknowledges his affinity with the French parasurrealist group Le Grand Jeu, which is reflected, among other things, in his publishing activities and translations. Links to the work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp can be also found. The paper reflects related elements of the work of Miloslav Topinka, the group Le Grand Jeu, and Marcel Duchamp as well as the natural ties between the French and Czech cultures.

More...

Biblioterapie ve výuce literatury na středních školách

Author(s): Jan Křeček,Marie Mokrá,Tamara Valešová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

The following article presents several options of the use of bibliotherapy as a psychotherapeutic method in teaching literature at grammar schools. It is divided into three parts: the first one deals with the theoretical background and advantages of this method including didactic benefits, and describes methodology the authors use at school. The second part brings attention to potential dangers for teachers who decide to use bibliotherapy from the point of view of psychology. The third part looks into two issues which emerge when using bibliotherapy at school: the didactic method of teaching literature and literary canon. The study is followed by a bibliotherapeutic experiment which has been already realised at school.

More...

Dvanáct studií o skutečném Jiřím Mahenovi

Author(s): Radomil Novák / Language(s): Czech Issue: 2/2022

This paper contains following book review: Poláček, Jiří a kol. Jiří Mahen v množném čísle. První vydání. Boskovice: Albert, 2021. 173 stran. ISBN 978-80-7326-324-9.

More...

The maintenance and transmission of memory through media : a murder in broadside ballads, news periodicals, and oral tradition

Author(s): Jana Poláková,Lenka Wachková Císařová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 1/2023

This study uses a 1907 quadruple homicide to present the different ways that information was presented by broadside ballads, news periodicals, and the oral tradition. Broadside ballads, which were akin to tabloid journalism and commemorated important events as one-page hard-copies of song lyrics, were losing popularity at the time, and news periodicals, like newspapers and magazines, represented the most accessible source of information for the broader social strata. Both helped to transmit and, later, maintain the memory of the infamous crime. This text focuses on similarities and differences in the reporting, including the choice of topic, sourcing, transmission of information, work with audiences, and authorship. Drawing on primary sources and present-day recapitulations, it analyses the ways in which memory was maintained (and not maintained) through these media. In addition, the study analyses the passage of information through oral folk tradition and collective and community memory, and their mutual influences.

More...

Singing the news in sixteenth-century cologne : the music broadsheets and pamphlets of Nikolaus Schreiber

Author(s): Mahew Laube / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2023

Active in Cologne between 1563 and 1598, the German printer Nikolaus Schreiber was a prolific publisher of Neue Zeitungen ("new reports"), short pamphlets and broadsheets which conveyed news of current events in both prose and ballad formats. Schreiber's five publications of news songs, which previously have received only passing consideration by scholars, are analyzed and contextualized in relation to his larger body of news pamphlets, as well as Cologne's mixed confessional environment during the late sixteenth century.

More...