Abstract
What does the statement that poetic works are similar mean? Is it a coincidental proximity or a broader developmental tendency? Is similarity merely a central position on the same-other axis? And where are its limits?
The eleven studies contained in this book focus on a selection of Czech poetic works, which are compared with foreign works. Czech poets are related to a context that may not be common or obvious to them, but with which they show points of contact. The aim is to enrich the view of Czech poetry in the period from 1945 to the present and to contribute to the question of what comparative literature is and what different strategies can be used to compare texts.
Each study also offers a more general framework to which it can be related. Examples include the phenomenon of spoken and lived voice, the issue of multilingualism, the ways in which the war experience can be conceptualized, the space of the city, or the theme of ecopoetry. The first two studies deal with the relationship between national and world literature and with the question of comparative method, which is also thematized in an afterword in the form of a polylogue. In it, the authors of the studies reflect on what they have achieved through their comparisons, the various problems they have encountered in doing so, and their common theoretical starting points.