The Fragile Signs of Historical Matter. On the Poetics of Old-Czech Narrative ‘Entertainingly Edifying’ Prose
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F67985955%3A_____%2F25%3A00644551" target="_blank" >RIV/67985955:_____/25:00644551 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://doi.org/10.14712/23366680.2025.2.2" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.14712/23366680.2025.2.2</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.14712/23366680.2025.2.2" target="_blank" >10.14712/23366680.2025.2.2</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The Fragile Signs of Historical Matter. On the Poetics of Old-Czech Narrative ‘Entertainingly Edifying’ Prose
Original language description
This study explores the poetics of Old Czech narrative prose, focusing on how medieval vernacular texts navigate the instability between sign and meaning. Drawing on works such as Alexander, Apollonius of Tyre, and Griselda, it argues that these prose narratives were composed in a way that exposes the limits of representation, often functioning not as definitive moral exempla but as provocations inviting ethical and emotional reflection. Rather than merely translating content from Biblical or other (para)historiographical sources, these texts bring to the fore processes of adaptation and recontextualization that highlight their historically situated human origins. They emphasize literary performativity and narrative self-awareness, revealing their own fragility and partiality as textual constructs. Through their layered structure and ambivalent exemplarity, they resist straightforward allegorical readings, offering instead multidirectional engagements with textuality, narrativity, historical imagination, emotion, and identity. The author proceeds to make inferences about the ethical effect of medieval narrative prose in its efforts to evoke restraint and self-discipline in its readers, as well as playing to their inner complexity.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>SC</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60206 - Specific literatures
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace
Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
Slovo a smysl
ISSN
1214-7915
e-ISSN
2336-6680
Volume of the periodical
22
Issue of the periodical within the volume
47
Country of publishing house
CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC
Number of pages
13
Pages from-to
31-43
UT code for WoS article
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EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-105033648307