Tanec v literární tvorbě Boženy Němcové: fikce, nebo fakta?

Even a cursory reading of the fiction work of Božena Němcová reveals frequent mentions of dance. The scenes often take place during dancing. The dancing assumes the role of the image in which the important moments of the plot structure are integrated. The patterns of behavior emerge during the dance that turn into testimonies of collectively shared reality. Therefore, the question arises on the sense of these reflections of the dance. Can they serve as a source of information on the dance practices of the time dance, or are they only a product of a literary fiction? This also provokes considerations as for the motivations for depicting the folk dance tradition and what else it reveals about the mutual relations in a given socio-cultural milieu. The article will consider if the dance situation can be considered as a literary device and if the description of the manifestations of folk dance culture could be understood as responding to the contemporaneous interest in traditional village culture as embodiment of positive values, as it reflected in the works of the so called village realists of the second half of the nineteenth century.