The Czech Manuscripts

The Czech Manuscripts
Author: David L. Cooper
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2023-10-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501771949

The Czech Manuscripts is dedicated to one of the most important literary forgeries on the model of Macpherson's Ossianic poetry. The Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts, discovered in 1817 and 1818, went on to play an outsized role in the Czech National Revival, functioning as founding texts of the national mythology and serving as sacred works in the long period when they were considered genuine. A successful literary forgery tells a lot about what a culture wants and needs at a particular moment. One fascinating aspect of this story is how a successful fake was able to function in an integral way as part of the Czech cultural revival of the nineteenth century, both because it played to expectations and nationalist values and because it met real cultural needs in many ways better than genuine historical literary works and artefacts. Also fascinating is the vainglorious Václav Hanka, a prolific and dedicated forger who was likely the center of the conspiratorial ring that created the manuscripts and who went on as the librarian of the Czech National Museum to alter a number of others. David Cooper analyzes what made the Manuscripts a convincing imitation of their Serbian and Russian models. He looks at how translation shaped their composition and at the benefit ofexamining them as pseudotranslations, and investigates the quasi-religious rituals and commemorative practices that developed around them. The Czech Manuscripts brings the Czech experience into the broader developments of European history.

The Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts with Other Forgeries of the Czech Revival

The Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts with Other Forgeries of the Czech Revival
Author: David L. Cooper
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018
Genre: Literary forgeries and mystifications
ISBN: 9780930042387

"The present volume of MSP's Czech Translations Series brings the first scholarly edition in English of the so-called Manuscripts, Czech literary forgeries of the early nineteenth century whose creation and reception represent one of the more remarkable episodes of Romantic forgery. The rich documentation here includes a selection of reviews and polemical articles that the Manuscripts provoked, showing their long term cultural significance and impact, including the central role they played in the development of Czech national consciousness. The annotated translation enables contemporary readers to experience their aesthetic force and perceive the qualities that linked Czech culture to the broad stream of European cultural developments"--

A History of Czechs and Jews

A History of Czechs and Jews
Author: Martin Wein
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2015-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317608216

Was Israel founded by Czechoslovakia? A History of Czechs and Jews examines this question and the resulting findings are complex. Czechoslovakia did provide critical, secret military sponsorship to Israel around 1948, but this alliance was short-lived and terminated with the Prague Trial of 1952. Israel’s "Czech guns" were German as much as Czech, and the Soviet Union strongly encouraged Czechoslovakia’s help for Israel. Most importantly however, the Czechoslovak-Israeli military cooperation was only part of a much larger picture. Since the mid-1800s, Czechs and Jews have been systematically comparing themselves to each other in literature, music, politics, diplomacy, media, and historiography. A shared perception of similar fates of two small nations trapped between East and West, in constant existential danger, helped forge a Czech-Jewish "national friendship" amid periods of estrangement. Yet, this Czech-Jewish national friendship, an idea that can be traced from Masaryk and Kafka via Weizman and Ben Gurion to Havel and Netanyahu, was more myth than reality. Relations were often mixed and highly dependent on larger historical developments affecting Central Europe and the Middle East. As the Czech Republic emerges as Israel’s main EU ally, this book provides a timely analysis of this old-new alliance and is essential reading for students and scholars with an interest in History and Jewish Studies.

Origins of the Czech National Renascence

Origins of the Czech National Renascence
Author: Hugh LeCaine Agnew
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 351
Release: 1994-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822990520

With the fall of socialism in Europe, the former East bloc nations experienced a rebirth of nationalism as they struggled to make the difficult transition to a market-based economy and self-governance. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, in particular, underscored the power of ethnic identity and ancestral loyalties.Hugh Agnew develops the argument that Czechoslovakia's celebrated national revival of the mid-eighteenth century has its intellectual roots in the Enlightenment and defined the nation's character and future development. He describes how intellectuals in eighteenth-century Bohemia and Moravia-the "patriotic intelligentsia"-used their discovery of pre-seventeenth-century history and literature to revive the antiquated Czech vernacular and cultivate a popular ethnic consciousness. Agnew also traces the significance of the intellectual influences of the wider Slavic world whereby Czech intellectuals redefined their ethnic and cultural heritage.Origins of the Czech National Renascence contributes to a renewed interpretation of a crucial period in Czech history.

Cosmas of Prague

Cosmas of Prague
Author: János M. Bak
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 566
Release: 2020-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 963386299X

The Latin-English bilingual volume presents the text of The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague. Cosmas was born around 1045, educated in Liège, upon his return to Bohemia, he got married as well as became a priest. In 1086 he was appointed prebendary, a senior member of clergy in Prague. He completed the first book of the Chronicle in 1119, starting with the creation of the world and the earliest deeds of the Czechs up to Saint Adalbert. In the second and third books Cosmas presents the preceding century in the history of Bohemia, and succeeds in reporting about events up to 1125, the year when he died. The English translation was done by Petra Mutlova and Martyn Rady with the cooperation of Libor Švanda. The introduction and the explanatory notes were written by Jan Hasil with the cooperation of Irene van Rensvoude.T

Anticlaudianus

Anticlaudianus
Author: Alanus (de Insulis)
Publisher: PIMS
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1973
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780888442635

Languages of Community

Languages of Community
Author: Hillel J. Kieval
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2000-12-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520214102

The author examines the Jewish experience of the past two hundred years in Bohemia and Moravia (the present day Czech Republic), including history, myth, demograohics, biography, culture and politics.

Jewish History and Jewish Memory

Jewish History and Jewish Memory
Author: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi
Publisher: UPNE
Total Pages: 488
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780874518719

Publication of Yosef Yerushalmi's Zakhor in 1982 inspired a generation of scholarly inquiry into historical images and myths, the construction of the Jewish past, and the making and meaning of collective memory. Here, eminent scholars in their respective fields extend the lines of his seminal study into topics that range from medieval rabbinics, homiletics, kabbalah, and Hasidism to antisemitism, Zionism, and the making of modern Jewish identity. Essays are clustered around four central themes: historical consciousness and the construction of memory; the relationship between time and history in Jewish thought; the demise of traditional forms of collective memory; and the writing of Jewish history in modern times.