Ambiguity of Interpretation: the Gender-Conscious Attitudes in the Dissident Works of the Czech Writer Lenka Procházková

This paper explores the presence of gender-conscious attitudes in the works of the Czech author Lenka Procházková (born 1951), a member of the dissident movement during the communist regime. It argues that her writings took issue with patriarchal social structures, yet sometimes camouflaged these challenges behind criticism of the totalitarian rule. These expressions, which one might be tempted to consider as feminist from a Western and 21st-century point of view, emerged within East European dissident culture and probably without exposure to Western feminist concepts. Procházková developed a model of an inner exile for dissidents that originated in a canonical work of Czech literature by Božena Němcová and from which one of her female protagonists draws strength. Thus, her works suggest that Western gender theories are limited in their potential to assess East European dissident women’s writing, when they fail to include local literary traditions

Disrupted Idylls

The study provides a close analysis of literary works by women in late-18th- and early-19th-century Russia, with a focus on Anna Naumova, Mariia Pospelova, and Mariia Bolotnikova. Political, social and feminist theories are applied to examine restrictions imposed on women. Women authors in particular were fettered by a culture of feminisation strongly influenced by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As Sentimentalism and its aesthetics began to give way to Romantic ideals, some provincial Russian women writers saw an opportunity to claim social equality, and to challenge traditional concepts of authorship and a view of women as mute and passive

Disrupted Idylls

The study provides a close analysis of literary works by women in late-18th- and early-19th-century Russia, with a focus on Anna Naumova, Mariia Pospelova, and Mariia Bolotnikova. Political, social and feminist theories are applied to examine restrictions imposed on women. Women authors in particular were fettered by a culture of feminisation strongly influenced by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As Sentimentalism and its aesthetics began to give way to Romantic ideals, some provincial Russian women writers saw an opportunity to claim social equality, and to challenge traditional concepts of authorship and a view of women as mute and passive

Faktografická literární výchova v české škole a její kritika

Dieser Artikel befasst sich mit Theorien zur tschechischen Literaturdidaktik vom 19. Jahrhundert bis heute. Er zeigt auf, dass Kritik an einem so genannten ‘faktographischen’ Literaturunterricht, dessen Hauptgewicht auf der Vermittlung literaturgeschichtlicher Informationen lag, in literaturdidaktischen Studien konstant geäussert wurde. Gleichzeitig propagierten Didaktikerinnen und Didaktiker stets einen Literaturunterricht, der auf selbständiger Lektüre, lernenden-zentrierter Textarbeit und kreativen Aufgaben basierte. Dieser Widerspruch zwischen einem realen faktographischen und einem idealen literaturästhetischen Unterricht zieht sich durch verschiedenste Staatsformen und politische Regime, seien dies die Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie, die Erste Republik, das sozialistische Regime, die post-sozialistische Zeit, oder die kapitalistische

From the communist era to the present: Women writers in Czech literature textbooks

This paper discusses the presence of women writers in Czech literature textbooks after 1989. It focuses on three periods: the communist period (1948 – 1989), the years immediately following the Velvet Revolution of 1989 (i.e., the early 1990s), and finally the post-communist and capitalist period (mid-1990s to 2009)

Denkbilder of Cultural Memory: Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front as Anthologized in Czech School Textbooks

This article presents a research project on the history of mentalities in Czech culture of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. The project analyses textbooks for the teaching of Czech literature for secondary schools. It focuses in particular on the excerpts from the literary works and analyses their potential for the learners to acquire cultural and historical knowledge as well as personal skills. These excerpts are conceptualized here as Denkbilder, a term that has been used repeatedly in German literature studies recently to define short prose texts that stimulate imagination as well as reflection. Responding to the high number of literary works from world literature in the Czech textbooks analysed for the project, this article addresses the contrasting presentations of one classic of German literature, Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues). It illustrates how a single literary work can be presented in different ways in literature textbooks, offering the learners different approaches for relating to the text and activating their cognitive and imaginative resources.16517