Cosmogonia - Alegorické reprezentace všeho – Papoušek Vladimír (2012)

The joint book by two literary scholars from leading Czech studies institutions offers a series of essayistically written studies, whose theme is the diverse manifestations of representations in modern literature and culture. While in the original context of Anglo-American new historicism, representations were examined primarily in terms of their functioning in individual literary works, here the focus shifts from specific works to broader theoretical problems, which are then illuminated and contemplated through illustrative specific texts. The authors reflect on the contemporary state of thinking about literature, in which faith in unifying systems and value hierarchies has disappeared. They draw inspiration from pragmatic thinking, which is characteristic of the mainstream discourse on literature in Anglophone areas, as well as from the need to connect academic thinking with pedagogical considerations, namely with the question of the applicability of individual concepts and terms offered by contemporary literary and cultural theory. Although the core of their thinking is literary material, the posed questions and proposed answers also take into account the ways we think and speak about visual art, pop culture, and mass media. The book does not aim to offer new coherent conceptual systems that would...