Abstract
The title of the volume, Ariadne's Threadball, references J. P.
Koubek's account on the general task of philology (1840) - it should provide its students with hermeneutic knowledge that would guide them through the labyrinth of the modern world layered by mathematical science and technology. In the introduction that goes back to Nietzsche's fragments of the mid 1870s We Philologists, a twofold intertwined focus of the volume is presented.
On the one hand it revisits the tradition of philology in its link to literary scholarship and, on the other, it pays tribute to Jiří Opelík (born 1930), a distinguished literary historian, critic and editor whose work represents the most living tradition of philological approach to Czech literature. Linking these two foci, the book is not intended as a usual "Festschrift" but as a critical contribution to contemporary debates concerning the status, methods and subject-matter of literary history.
Jiří Opelík's recollection on his university teachers (Teachers of Philology) and the impact of their methods on his career is followed by a series of contributions by contemporary critics active in the field of Czech literary studies.