Romantic Nationalist Paradigm Overcome: The Study of the Early Modern Czech Language and Bohemian Literature

Abstract

The paper presents the latest trends in studying the eighteenth-century written culture of the Czech lands and covers research on the history of the Czech language and Bohemian literature, its modern challenges, and prospects. The history of written culture in the eighteenth-century Czech lands is divided into two main periods. The first period dated to the beginning of the century and lasted until the early 1770s; during this time, the leading cultural institutions, especially schools and publishing houses, were owned or sponsored by Catholic orders, most notably the Jesuits. The second period commences in the mid-1770s, when, after the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II, the Habsburg state established its cultural hegemony. Many nineteenth- and twentieth-century philologists stigmatised the earlier period as an era of „downfall” unworthy of interest but praised the last quarter of the eighteenth century as the formative years of the Czech National Revival. However, the latest research in this area proves this point of view to be distorted and, in some ways, mistaken. The paper gives a brief overview of the older approach to studying the eighteenth-century Bohemian written culture and points out its disadvantages. The central part of the paper introduces concepts developed by contemporary scholars that might also be applied to linguistic and literary studies in other Central European countries.