Peasant theme in the Czech literature of the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century

Abstract

The article is devoted to the Czech rural prose of the second half of the 19th century and the 20th century. Using a chronological perspective, the author presents the work of the most important representatives of the trend (e.g. Božena Němcova, Vítězslav Hálek, Karolína Světla, Josef Holečk, Josef Knap, A.C. Nora and others), as well as the changes in the methods of creating rural images, peasant characters – abandoning a stereotypical approach in favor of realistic-ethnographic descriptions of space and the world of nature, customs and traditions of the Czech people. She pays attention to the evolution of genres, which took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The texts that began to emerge at that time were at the border between fictional literature and documentary­‑reportage (e.g. Drašar by Teréza Novákova), family chronicles (e.g. a cycle Naši by Josef Holečk), novels belonging to critical realism (e.g. Zapád by Karel Václav Rais). Moreover, the author describes the influence of ruralism on the Czech literature in the 20th century (e.g. the introduction of colloquial speech and dialect). She mentions the assumptions of this trend, whose program was created by Josef Knap in his essay K severovýchodu, published in 1925 in the magazine „Sever a východ”. Ruralism was supposed to be a counterbalance against avantgarde trends of the 1920s and 1930s, bringing together conservative authors, who were critical towards the city and attached to the idea of a Czech village as an enclave of “true Czechism” and a peasant as “a custodian” of national traditions. As examples of superlocal and naturalistic image of peasant reality after the First World War, the author mentions the work of A.C. Nora, who – as opposed to ruralists – was interested mainly in causes of conflicts among families, the egoism of peasants, as well as divisions within rural community.