Academic literature on the topic 'Religious literature, Czech'

This article focuses on international mission from Protestant churches in the Czech Republic since 1989. It analyses the contemporary missiological literature related to the Czech context and engages the cross-cultural aspects of Czech mission, both inside and outside of the Czech Republic. The author argues for greater missiological reflection on international Czech mission.

Summary The paper deals with the Bohemian Reformation literature. Culture of the Bohemian Reformation belongs to a little-known phenomenon in Czech historiography. Art and culture historians have focused mostly on the Hussite period and less on the 16th and 17th centuries. An important issue is the reception of German Lutheran religious educational literature in Protestant Circles of the Czech lands. The author focuses primarily on books in which the genre of mediation dominates, and explores the prompt Czech reaction to several German authors (Martin Moller, Johann Gerhard etc.) active between approximately 1580–1620 who found intensive response in the Bohemian Lands. The second important field is the Czech hymnography in the 17th–18th centuries. The author finds German inspiration for Czech hymnbooks. He deals with Luther’s songs in the hymnbook Cithara sanctorum by Jiří Třanovský and especially with late baroque Protestant exile hymnbooks influenced by the Pietistic Circle in Halle and Herrnhut (Harfa nová [‘A New Harp’] by Jan Liberda, Lipský kancionál [‘Hymnbook of Leipzig’] by Georg Sarganek). Owing to the German stimuli, the spectrum of genres, ideological processes and stylistic registers in Czech literature from the 16th to 18th centuries is comparatively rich and diversified.

The issue of the Edict of Toleration legalised Protestants of Lutheran and Reformed confessions in Bohemia and Moravia. Their religious life required the support of printed materials in the form of religious literature of the corresponding confession approved by the state. Relatively high production of Protestant books, both original and translated, began to emerge. They anchored both Protestant denominations but simultaneously became mutually competitive and sometimes came into controversy with Roman Catholic authors. The author of this article monitors all printed Protestant literature in Bohemia and Moravia of the so-called toleration period, i.e. the period when the believers of the two Protestant confessions did not have full-fledged positions and were affected by numerous restrictions. In terms of book culture, it is divided into: 1) the period of early toleration (1781–1800), 2) the period of established toleration (1800–1848) and 3) the period of late toleration (1848–1861). In this framework, he provides an overview of Protestant literature in terms of its typological, authorial and publishing development and also evaluates the readership of this literary production.

Pilgrimage guides belong to the most widely published types of religious literature in Bohemia and Moravia in the 17th and 18th centuries. During this period Baroque religiosity grew stronger and the Catholic Church sought to consolidate its position in the country, which inclined to the ideas of the Reformation. Religious pilgrimages, festivities and ceremonies along with the worship of saints and faith in miracles, served as promotional tools of the Catholic faith. In order to spread Marian Piety, Czech and Moravian printers published works written by the representatives of church elites. In their works they dealt with the history of pilgrimage sites related to the Virgin Mary. The prints were published in Latin and German. In addition to the treatise about the pilgrimage sites and miraculous healings, they included prayers, songs and recommendations as to how to behave during a pilgrimage. It was not only the text component which the reader found interesting; he/she was also impressed by the graphic design of the print. The book decoration consisted of vignettes, friezes, typographic ornaments, lines or clichés, which fulfi lled an aesthetic and practical function. The customers’ interest was stimulated by copper engraving illustrations and Baroque allegorical frontispieces depicting a Marian statue and miracle picture or by depiction of the concrete pilgrimage site in the form of a veduta. The authors included some of the important Czech illustrators and engravers who collaborated with famous foreign artists.

AbstractAs opposed to German scholarship, the issue of municipal self-government and communal elites has not received much attention in Czech historiography. This represents a significant shortcoming: in the absence of an analysis of the mechanisms by which self-governing municipalities functioned, it is not possible to describe the constitution of modem civil society in the nineteenth century, including the development of national relations. This article provides an overview of relevant German and Austrian literature, proposes a methodology of research in the Czech environment, including an analysis of the use-fulness of individual types of archival sources, and offers preliminary results of the reviewers' research on the cities of Moravská Ostrava and Brno. Close attention is paid to the social-professional composition of communal elites, national and religious development, municipal economies with regard to communal companies, and the process of creating a modem state administration.

The article presents a representative selection of a nearly hundred of the oldest maps of Central Europe which were influencing the development of map representation of Czech countries and mostly have not yet been published in Czech literature. Geographical content of map representation of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia in maps of the Central European area is as informative as in separate maps of these territories. Cartographical information does not end on the other side of our border, but it links to representation of neighbouring countries and stresses political, religious, communication, linguistic and other connections and particularities as well. The selection is based on typographical classification (into ten groups) of printed maps of the Central European area of German, Italian, Dutch and French origin dating from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 17th century. Its knowledge is necessary to determine genealogy of Central European and regional maps from the period approximately till 1650.

Motif of death in the work of Slovak, Czech and Hungarian authors of Catholic literatureIn the context of the evolution of religious literature, including the poetics of Slovak, Czech and Hungarian Catholic literature, the motif of death is not particularly unusual. This fact is clearly noticeable in the work of authors of the turn of the 19th century and the entire 20th century, as well as in the following millennium. For example, in the first phase of the creative work of Jakub Deml, who is considered one of the most important representatives of Czech Catholic literature of the first half of the 20th century, mirroring the so-called apocalyptic realism, we notice the thematization of solitude, death, extinction and nothingness. Death in Deml’s work is depicted as an entity that one seeks with an affection and desire, while “it constantly encounters Life. But as soon as they get excited and look for Life, they constantly meet Death, even those who don’t look for one for themselves”. Few years afterwards, a very similar thesis was developed by the later Catholic convert, important thinker and — it can be said — a comrade of the author of Slovak Catholic modernism, Pavol Strauss: “Life consists of search for life and it finds death within”. A Hungarian writer János Pilinszky, who besides spiritual-Christian poetry wrote great essays, the so-called Lyrical Diaries, wrote regarding death: “Death doesn’t exist for real, at least not the one that can be seen from the outside. We have to live first to be able to consider death”. And finally, Jan Zahradníček in his debut collection shifts the perception of death to the next semantic level, when it his poem Their shadow he writes “for the living ones I was alive too much / and for the alive ones I was too dead”. The aim of this paper is to interpret the motif of death in the work of selected authors of the Slovak, Czech and Hungarian Catholic literature. Motyw śmierci w twórczości słowackich, czeskich i węgierskich autorów literatury katolickiejW kontekście rozwoju twórczości religijnej, w tym poezji słowackiej, czeskiej i węgierskiej literatury katolickiej, motyw śmierci nie jest niczym wyjątkowym. Zjawisko to można zaobserwować również w dziełach autorów z przełomu XIX i XX wieku. Motyw śmierci pojawia się w całej dwudziestowiecznej literaturze i przechodzi do trzeciego tysiąclecia. Występuje na przykład u Jakuba Demla, który jest uważany za jednego z najwybitniejszych przedstawicieli czeskiej literatury katolickiej pierwszej połowy XX wieku. W pierwszym okresie jego twórczości, w czasie tak zwanego realizmu apokaliptycznego, można zauważyć, że tematyka utworów krąży wokół samotności, śmierci, zaniku i nicości. Pavol Staruss, wybitny myśliciel katolicki, konwertyta z judaizmu i — można powiedzieć — wierny towarzysz autorów słowackiego modernizmu katolickiego, często podkreślał, iż życie składa się z poszukiwania życia, a w ramach tych poszukiwań natrafia się na śmierć. Z kolei János Pilinszky — węgierski pisarz, który oprócz duchowo-chrześcijańskiej twórczości poetyckiej tworzył wspaniałe eseje i tak zwane dzienniki liryczne — pisał w odniesieniu do śmierci, że śmierć w rzeczywistości nie istnieje, przynajmniej nie ta śmierć, którą możemy zaznać z zewnątrz. Trzeba najpierw żyć, abyśmy mogli wziąć pod uwagę śmierć.I wreszcie Jan Zahradníček w swoim debiutanckim tomiku przesuwa pojęcie śmierci na inny poziom znaczeniowy. W wierszu Ich cień umieszcza strofę: „dla martwych byłem za bardzo żywy / a dla żywych za bardzo martwy”. Celem tego artykułu jest przedstawienie przeglądu i dokonanie interpretacji twórczości wybranych autorów słowackiej, czeskiej i węgierskiej literatury katolickiej pod kątem występującego w niej motywu śmierci.

The article is devoted to the assessment of the “Russian” aspect in Czech history and culture based on the prose of Jaroslav Rudiš. Jaroslav Rudiš, one of the most prominent contemporary Czech writers, was born in Turnov (1972). Since the publishing of “The Sky under Berlin” (2002), his work has positively attracted the attention of critics and has won a wider community of readers, which is evidenced by several reprints of his books and a considerable interest in the new one. Jaroslav Rudiš distinguishes himself from the other modern Czech authors by the ability to soberly, aptly and relevantly describe the problems of contemporaries. His characters are people who personally experienced the “whiff ” of the history and felt changes in Czech society over the second half of the 20th century. Despite the fact that Rudiš does not write explicitly about Russia, does not talk about the eternal themes of Russian philosophy and culture and does not discuss positive or negative aspects of Russian influence on international politics, he shows the impact of the “Russian” aspect on the course of the newest Czech history quite accurately and ironically, although infrequently. Russia and the “Russian” in the prose of the author are mentioned in connection with the events in the lives of individual heroes who perceive the Russian aspect as given and periodically interacting with their lives depending on the circumstances. The views of his characters are ambiguous: they are not strictly negative with regard to important events, but they are not thoughtlessly positive, when the breathtaking spirit and depriving rational thinking of the wonderful creative ability of the Russian soul are praised. The tonality of Rudiš’s prose is comparable to Dovlatov’s irony of the “Reserve” or to the poetry of the Yerofeyev’s “Moscow − Petushki”. The study of Rudish’s prose was carried out by the method of excerpt from the available Czech texts of the writer. Axiological characteristics (more than 120 citations from 7 works of the author) relevant for representing the image of the “Russian” in Czech literature were analyzed from the point of view of imagological criteria.the religious feeling.

The activities of the Landfras printing works and the associated publishing house are an important part of the history of book culture in the Czech lands in the 19th century and form a significant chapter in the history of book printing and publishing in this period. The focus of the production of the printing works and the publishing house reflected the new needs of literate broad social classes in the 19th century, showing increased interest in the printed word. The company used the modern methods and technologies available, which reduced the price of the final book or other printed materials. For publication, it selected titles whose sales were guaranteed or at least expected. The result was the repeated printing of a number of titles of religious, educational and entertainment literature, which had already been popular in previous centuries, and the development of contemporary titles for the general public from both urban and rural areas. For centuries, great popularity was mainly enjoyed by the titles of religious folk literature (Himmelschlüssel prayer books by the theologian Martin von Cochem and other prayer and devotional books), in which Baroque Catholic piety was reflected until the late 19th century. To the original Himmelschlüssel and other traditional titles, the printing works added titles of its regular authors and their translations of contemporary prayer and religious literature. It complemented the titles of secular entertainment literature (reprints of original works, e.g. Kronika o Štilfridovi [The Chronicle of Štilfríd] or Kronika sedmi mudrců [The Chronicle of the Seven Wise Men]) with translations and original works by Jan Hýbl and Václav Rodomil Kramerius, and it also printed moralising stories by local priests. Educational literature, such as guides for homesteaders, cooks and the like sold also well. A separate activity section comprises the publication and printing of textbooks mostly for local schools. Until the end of the 19th century, they were abundantly complemented by printed broadsides, affordable to every household. A significant chapter of the 19th century was the development of periodicals, which was mirrored in the second half of that century also in newly emerging regional titles, especially in the weekly Ohlas od Nežárky [Echoes from the River Nežárka], which began to be published in 1871.

In scholarly circles, the name of the Czech writer and journalist Edvard Jelínek is usually associated with interest in Polish topics. Most of his friends and scholarly contacts were Polish, which also was in line with his numerous publications concerning Polish cultural traditions. However, Jelínek also had significant knowledge of the cultural, political, and social life in other Slavic areas, which he utilized as the editor of «Slovanský sborník» (Slavic Proceedings), a journal focused on all Slavic areas (published in 1881, 1883–1887). In this article, we demonstrate that, mostly at the beginning of Jelínek’s career, Russian topics also appeared in his texts, mainly Russian literature, culture, theater, and the issue of the beginning of Russian-Czech contacts. He published these texts primarily after his first visit to Russia in 1877. In the 1870s, the retired Russian officer Nikolaj M. Yendogurov had a significant influence on him, helping him to understand some Slavic issues and to perfect his knowledge of Russian. Starting from the 1890s, he expressed his opinions regarding the Russian-Polish conflict in several texts. There, he disagreed with the Russification of the Polish cultural environment and drew attention to the language rights of the Polish people. However, his works were not anti-Russian in character, and he expressed appreciation for Russian culture. The issue of Russian-Polish relations also appears in his literary prose works, e.g. in the novel «Motýlek z Norské pohádky» (The Butterfly from the Norwegian Fairytale).

The thesis deals with the works of the Czech baroque in Latin writing authors of non- Catholic and Catholic confession: Pavel Stránský (1583-1657), Jan Amos Komenský (1592- 1670), Jan Laetus-Veselský (1609-1659), Julius Solimanus (1595-1639), Bohuslav Balbín (1621-1688), Tomáš Pešina of Čechorod (1629-1680) and Jan Florián Hammerschmidt (1652- 1735). The focus of the thesis is (apart from the comparism of the point of view of the authors on personality and reign of Rudolph II. with the aspect on the ideal of the sovereign at that time) the description of their life and work as well, because some of them haven't been subject of interest of the researchers so far. The thesis brings also the stylistic and content escription of their historiographical works and selected passages from them are edited in the final part of the work.

The thesis deals with the presence of Muslims and Islam in the Czech area. Its ambition is to describe the current state, orientation, integration and current public perceptions of Muslim communities in the Czech Republic. For a more comprehensive mapping of the Muslim aspect in the Czech area, the work could not avoid, albeit in a nutshell, certain socio-historical events that could affect actual perceptions of Muslims and Islam by Czech citizens. It describes not only Islamic themes in the literary production in Bohemia and Moravia but also the influence of Islamic science in the Middle Ages and its reflection on the works of Czech scholars. Another part of the text deals with Islam in the Czech Republic in terms of its inclusion in the legislation. Subsequent chapters follow the Muslim community in the Czech Republic, their charity work and degree of integration. The main method of the work is the selection and analysis of selected relevant literary, journal and scientific texts, i.e. texts mentioning Islam on Czech territory from the Middle Ages to the present.

The diploma thesis deals with the typology of nine chosen literary women characters of the second half of 19th century Czech literature. The woman character from the Čtyry doby short story by Božena Němcová, Liduška and Lenka by Vítězslav Hálek, lady Ruska, miss Máry and the unnamed protagonist of the U tří lilií short story from Povídky malostranské by Jan Neruda, Caterina and lady Dragopulos from Jan Maria Plojhar by Julius Zeyer and Lucy from Magdalena by Josef Svatopluk Machar, are at focus. The theoretical part outlines the issues of literary styles of the second half of 19th century Czech literature (namely Romanticism, Realism, Parnasism). Also it delimits the extension of markers for interpretation of women literary characters and, moreover, it briefly presents the women social position in 19th century society. In practical part, the thesis aims to analyze thoroughly the chosen characters, trying to point out all the common features as well as the differences among them. The thesis concludes with the comparison of all chosen characters and, at the same time, it sums up the main changes in the depiction of a women literary character throughout the century.

The dissertation entitled "Religious Issues in Karolina Světlá's Ještěd Novels" deals with an analysis of the Ještěd Novels by the author Karolina Světlá. It characterises the depiction of vernacular devoutness in the novels by means of an analysis of the changes in the characters' religious consciousness and their subsequent interpretation. The paper confronts the fictional depiction of the various forms of religiousness with real historic facts; the most important factors of the religious positions of the "long" 19th century are verified on the scale of the Ještěd Novels. The objective of the paper is to shed light on the progressive qualitative changes in Karolina Světlá's works of prose and interpret them against the backdrop of the defined problem area, which is the period concept of devoutness and attitudes to faith as such.

Between Defence and Resistance: Destinies of Eighteenth-Century Protestant Communities in Eastern Bohemia and Haut-Languedoc Abstract Based on archive research and literature the thesis compares the religious life of illegal Protestant communities in the 18th century Eastern Bohemia and Haut-Languedoc. From macroanalytical perspective it assesses the strategies of protestant minorities used to resist the disciplining efforts of the absolutist state. The confessional homogeneity, economic background and social stratification of Protestants in Eastern Bohemia and Haut-Languedoc differed. Yet, the contrasting comparison opens up the way to analyse the divergent resistance strategies. Further, the thesis examines the existence and nature of attempts to simplify the religious doctrine and to modify the liturgy undertaken by the lay and ordained priests and the worshippers. The structure combines the thematic and chronological approach, while keeping a broad perspective that encompasses also the economic and cultural context. First tree chapters outline and conceptualize the problem of prohibited Protestantism in both regions during the 17th and most of the 18th centuries. While in Languedoc the Presbyterian-synodic structure was revived (albeit illegally), in Eastern Bohemia and in whole Bohemia and Moravia...

The Virgin Mary as such cannot be examined scientifically. We can, however, examine her ‘apparitions’ in the world, as well as the innumerable variants of Marian devotion and cult. This volume focuses on her manifestations in the post-Communist region with some geographical spillovers. It is either because post-Communist transformation concerned not only the former socialist countries, but also had an impact on the entire European region and was part of the overall post-modern and post-Communist reconfiguration of the European area. Another factor is that Marian worship is not controlled by political borders of present-day nation states. It has a wider transnational potential and impact. Nevertheless, we focused our viewfinder primarily on the post-Communist region, as we believe that thanks to its geographical and symbolic location and economic position in Europe, as well as its historical roots and traditions and common Communist history and heritage, it not only shows different traits of modernity compared to ‘Western Europe’, but we also face specific features and forms of worshipping of the Virgin Mary. We therefore decided to present in this volume the traces of the Virgin Mary by means of more in-depth analyses from selected countries of the post-socialist region. By means of this publication, we can observe how the Virgin Mary is manifested in the faces of seers and pilgrims and how audio-visual means are becoming a direct part of Marian apparitions in Germany in the modern era (H. Knoblauch and S. Petschke); how she speaks through the mouth of a blind Roma woman and pacifies the ethnic and religious tensions between various groups in Romania (L. Peti); how she attributes meaning to meaningless places on the map by reallocating her presence through the geo- graphical and time distribution of Marian dedications in Slovakia (J. Majo); how, after the fall of Communism, she revitalises the old places of her cult with new power, bringing together traditional and non-traditional forms of worship in the secular Czech Lands (M. Holubová); how her messages are spread on the websites of new non-traditional Marian movements and how their apocalyptical warnings are being updated and localised into the specific national environment in Czechia (V. Tutr); how she addresses the readers of Marian literature differently on the shelves of book- stores in Slovakia and Austria (R. Kečka); but also how the Virgin Mary absorbs ultra-modern millennial and spiritualistic concepts of Mother Earth and Mother of the Universe, becoming the speak- er of the great unified Hungarian nation (J. Kis-Halas); how she is becoming the re-discovered herald of Serbian national identity (A. Pavićević); how she absorbs the local forms of faith and folk Christianity in modern era and is thus the manifestation of grass- root Christianity and local religious culture in Bulgaria (V. Baeva and A. Georgieva); and how the path from a private to an officially recognised apparition depends not only on the Virgin Mary and the seer, but also on the overall constellation of the audience and the ability to offer a religious ready-made event (T. Zachar Podolinská and L. Peti). This publication observes the current diversity of the forms of Marian devotion in post-Communist countries through different national and geographically defined contours and, in particular, the ability of the Virgin Mary to satisfy the hunger for modern spirituality and authentic religiousness, give voice to unofficial and popular religions, revitalise and redefine old places of cult and add new ones, appease war conflicts, speak out on behalf of nations and marginalised ethnic groups, and guard national and conservative values. The post-modern and post-Communist Mary thus restores ruptured traditions with love and enchants the violently atheised European region with new miracles and apparitions, regardless of whether top Church and state representatives like it or not.