Filosofie Národního divadla a Miroslav Tyrš - Příspěvek k dějinám českého myšlení 19. století – Bojda Martin (2021)

The book offers a new overall interpretation of the main intellectual currents, values, and aspirations of the Czech National Revival, considering their culmination and real form in the construction of the National Theatre. It is a belated assessment of the 150th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of the National Theatre and the premiere of Smetana's Dalibor held on that occasion, an anniversary that, despite being associated with the greatest celebration of the Czech nation in the 19th century, went almost unnoticed. In contrast to a narrowly identity-based and traditional nationalism, it shows the nation-building process in its historical course and theoretical contemplation in the Enlightenment and Romanticism as a mediator of social and cultural emancipation: as a process of inevitable modernization that intertwined more strongly here than elsewhere with the ethnicization of historical development. It represented progress in civic self-liberation and the creative self-realization of individuals (the nation). The National Theatre and the works of B. Smetana and M. Tyrš serve, among other things, to clarify how the innovation of artistic form depends on the progressiveness of content, on the value foundation, and on the social integration of creation.