Počátky literární kritiky v českých zemích (1770-1805) – Dobiáš Dalibor (2021)

Literary history usually links the beginnings of Czech literary criticism with Josef Jungmann. However, what does the pre-Jungmann era reveal about literary criticism, not only regarding the formation of the linguistic and ethnic canons of the 19th century but also about our literary communication in general? This monograph presents the results of a survey of more than fifty German and Czech periodicals, and other contemporary media, in which ideas about literature and its social role were delineated between 1770 and 1805. It examines the rules of literary communication as introduced to their readers in the Czech lands by the first critics, often coming from outside, and the position of these critics in relation to domestic Enlightenment scholarship. It traces their ideas about the literary public, in which, alongside the prestigious social institution of the theater, fiction gained an increasingly significant place, the transformation of the older genre system into a modern open canon, and the differentiation of communication about it in new, interest-based periodicals, as well as its limits in Central Europe. It investigates the impacts of the new literary system on the specific Latin and Czech-speaking environment of the Czech lands. Here, the monograph also touches on other, more general themes: How, in light of early criticism, this field outside traditional…