SOU OBÉ ĚJINY - Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV - Akademie věd ČR

Summaries Anotace 527
a fundamental work on the topic, and is a convincing response to recent debates in
Czech literary studies, in which the very possibility of writing a history of literature
today has been problematized. It is also a challenge to those who would come up
with alternative conceptions. The reviewer praises the great reliability of the facts
presented in this work and also, despite certain pitfalls, their maximally neutral and
dispassionate presentation. He also stresses the high quality and suitable length of
the sections devoted to the broader social and cultural-political context of literature
in the years of its mass idealogization. He points as well to the useful summary of
genres on the boundary of literature included in this history, and argues that some of
the published criticisms of this publication are unfair.
Historical Analyses of the Building of Czech Democracy
Jan Bureš
Gjuričová, Adéla and Michal Kopeček (eds). Kapitoly z dějin české demokracie po
roce 1989. Prague and Litomyšl: Paseka, 2008, 328 pp.
The reviewer argues that this multi-authored volume is a successful attempt to
provide a multidisciplinary view of the last twenty years of political developments,
not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the broader framework of the central
European societies building democracy. The main strength of the volume, the
reviewer claims, is that the individual articles by its thirteen authors (five of
whom are from abroad) seek to capture various aspects of these developments in
historical, political-science, sociological, economic, legal, and also literary and filmstudies
analyses. These approaches complement each other nicely. The reviewer
devotes attention to each of the contributions, and outlines their main arguments.
European Integration as a Problem
Vlastimil Hála
Csáky, Moritz and Johannes Feichtinger (eds). Europa, geeint durch Werte
Die europäische Wertedebatte auf dem Prüfstand der Geschichte. Bielefeld: Transkript,
2007, 215 pp;
Csáky, Moritz and Elizabeth Grosseger (eds). Jenseits von Grenzen: Transnationales,
translokales Gedächtnis. Vienna: Presens, 2007, 225 pp.
The two essay volumes under review contain papers given at conferences in Vienna.
The authors, predominantly Austrians, endeavour to apply the historical concept
of ‘lieux de mémoire’ (places of memory) in a search for answers to the question
about the point of thematization of European values in processes of integration