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Between the „ruchadlo“ and the Czech Cottage: The (Non-)Discovery of the „Folk“ Culture Invention in the 19th Century and its Impact on Research into Vernacular Culture
Woitsch, Jiří
The article presents and uses specific examples (swing plow called ruchadlo and timber vernacular dwelling houses) to analyze the conceptualization of the common people and vernacular culture in the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Two opposing beliefs on the ability of the non-elites to be actively creative were typical for this era. The one side assumed a completely passive taking over of patterns, technologies, etc. from economically and socially more advanced environments, while the other attributed exceptional creative abilities to „regular folk,“ some even leading to historic discoveries. These two concepts strongly resonated in various Central European trends in the humanities and social sciences throughout the entire 20th century. This was symptomatic, especially in those instances, where historians, museologists, art historians or even non-academic experts were the ones conducting the research. Both lines of thought share the highly problematic notion of viewing the people as a creative collective entity or a passive entity.
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“To miss out on the Region, the People and Life because of Castles and Ruins…” Tensions between Historicism and Regionalism using Zbudovská Blata as an Example
Hrdina, Martin
The region of Zbudovská Blata including its residents became known throughout Czech society at the beginning of the 20th century mainly thanks to the efforts of writers K. Klostermann and J. Holeček. The purpose of this essay is to recall the key circumstance of the literal presentation of the rural environment, which was a departure from romantic historicism of the 19th century, and to describe the role which the writers above bestowed upon the Blata residents in the context of Czech-speaking society. While Holeček used the Blata surroundings for purposes of a multifaceted polemic with the aristocracy, the conciliatory Klostermann created a timeless symbol from that same environment, thanks to which he secured a permanent place in Czech culture with his novel Mlhy na Blatech (Mist over Blata).
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he Appropriation of Folk rhetoric and the Genre of the (Folk) Fairytale of the 19th century
Šidák, Pavel
The essay describes the appropriation of the folk fairytale in Czech artistic literature. The related phenomena and problems are also discussed. In the first half of the 19th century, when the fairytale was appropriated as a genre, this was mainly about finding a functional spot for the fairytale and its genre form. In the second half of the century, it was about the term “modus”, which the fairytale used to influence so-called high literature and its narrative strategy.
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The City Dweller´s Distrust of Folk. The Narrative Figure
Jedličková, Alice
This paper focuses on a strategy used to represent rural people, or “simple folk,” in narratives whose goal is to motivate readers to reassess their own attitudes towards the folk. The authorial intent of such works draws from the idea that traditional values are not appreciated and therefore must be discovered and protected (e.g., language, the past, the rural folk). Urban dwellers’ prejudiced perception of the countryside represented in such narratives can be simply formulated through contrasting images: for example, the progress, education, and conveniences offered by the city versus the backwardness, ignorance, and poverty of the countryside. This strategy is based on the distrustful or dismissive views of city people towards the folk as implicitly voiced by the narrator or by a specific character in the narrative. In contrast, we also find rather explicit counterarguments against these views in the speech of the narrator or in the speech, actions, and behaviors of the characters. In rural-themed prose from the 1850s through the 1870s, the subject matter of this study, this constellation of ideas and opposing ideas is regularly reflected in both the story and the narrative discourse and forms a stable narrative device, which substantially contributes to forming the narrative point-of-view and its effectiveness in persuading readers. In some works, this narrative device permeates the entire text and affects its genre - in Božena Němcová’s short story “Poor Folk” the “slice of life” genre intertwines with the genre of argument: every situation presented is in some regards an argument against the previously established idea that “city people distrust the folk.”
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