Paths of Polemic : Significance and Transformations of the Genre of Polemic in the Czech Literature at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries
Abstract
Material-based studies in the monograph are focused on diverse cases and types of polemic, and also on the aspects of the polemic as a genre in Czech literature from the mid-1880s to the 1910s or 1920s. From the viewpoint of literary history, the polemic is newly introduced as a specific genre, the essence of which lies in the equal influence of dialogue and failure or unwillingness to understand and which can be characterised especially by topic (disagreement and conflict which itself, after all, is the object), strategy (self-enforcement), function (victory) and a specifically defined style and form.
It is a genre with a special memory, self-centred and self-confirming, syncretic, making its impact through texts of various backgrounds, a phenomenon on the boundary of discursive practices, disciplines and social contexts. Just as it exists on the boundary between genres, the polemic transcends the field of literature (art) and merges with spheres outside art.
It is also the space for an inseparable permeation and confrontation between the personal and the material, the private and the public. As we follow critique and polemic confrontations as part of the history of critical thinking at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is impossible to avoid the question of Modernism.
As regards the relationship between the number of identifiable traces of the original disputes and the potential for an up-to-date interpretation of them in a new and necessarily evaluating perspective, the topic of the polemic is important for painting a less rigid picture of Czech literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in a broader scope, i. e. in the changing situation of literary, artistic and social relationships. The publication is supplemented by an overview of the most important polemics in the period under review with a detailed bibliography.