THE PROBLEM OF 'CATHOLIC LITERATURE' IN THE CZECH LITERARY CRITICISM (1918-1939)

Contemporary historians of literature generally assume that the increase of the interest in 'Catholic literature' after the year 1918 was the result of an urgent secularization of the Czech society. A detailed analysis of the declarations of the Czech critics of the 1920s and 1930s would suggest quite a different interpretation. As the findings mentioned in the dissertation prove, the project of 'Catholic literature' put forward by the Catholic camp from 1918-1939, constituted a serious counterproposition on the utopian artistic concepts of the Czech avant-garde. It was in fact the reaction to the projects of Proletarian Art and Poetism, the main current in the Czech poetry of the 1920s. Under the banner of 'Catholic literature', a return to the native literary tradition was proclaimed.