Czech literature is the literature of the historical regions of Bohemia and Moravia, (now part of the Czech Republic, formerly of [Czechoslovakia]). This most often means literature written by Czechs, in the Czech language, although Old Church Slavonic, Latin, and German were also used, mostly in the early periods. Modern authors from the Czech territory who wrote in other languages (i. e. German) are generally considered separately, and their writing usually existed in parallel with Czech-language literature and did not interact with it. Thus Franz Kafka, for example, who wrote in German (though he also knew Czech rather well), falls within Austrian literature, though he lived his entire life in Bohemia.
Middle Ages
9th century
The first known literature in the Czech lands originates in the 8th century AD, in the kingdom of Greater Moravia. The saints Konstantin (Cyril) and Methodius, sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to complete the Christianization of the kingdom, created there the first written Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic, written in the Glagolitic alphabet. Their lives were spent in the effort to join together Eastern and Western Christian cultural traditions, and thus their translations of Latin liturgy into Slavonic are the earliest surviving literature created in the Czech lands. However, they met with stiff opposition from the Germanic priests already active in Bohemia, and shortly after their deaths, Slavic mass was forbidden, Latin reinstated, and the literary tradition in Greater Moravia terminated.
10 – 11th century
After the collapse of Greater Moravia at the end of the 9th century, the political and cultural orientation of the Bohemian lands shifted from Byzantium to Rome. Very little is known about the next two centuries of literary development - fragments of works exist, but many are imply inferred from citations in works found elsewhere. The main cultural center of the period is the monastery at Sázava, which served as a point of exchange between Russian and Byzantine culture and Western, Roman ideas. The close of the century, however, heralded the ultimate victory of Latin over Old Church Slavonic as the official language of liturgy and culture in the Bohemia and the shift of cultural alliance for all the Czech lands from east to west. The Legend of Christian, written in Latin verse in the latter half of the 10th century, describing the lives of Saint Ludmila and Saint Wenceslas is the greatest surviving work; its authenticity is under some dispute, however.
12 – 14th century, Luxembourg dynasty
In Přemyslid Bohemia of the 12th and early13th centuries, all preserved literary works are written in Latin. The main types of literature of the period were chronicles and hagiography – descriptions of lives of the saints intended to be read aloud. Bohemian hagiographic works focus exclusively on Bohemian saints (Sts. Ludmila, Wenceslas, Procopius, Cyril and Methodius, and Adalbert), although numerous legends about Bohemian saints were also written by foreign authors. The most important chronicle of the period is the Chronia Boeemorum (Bohemian Chronicle) by Kosmas, a compilation of history colored though the needs of the political rulers of the time, serving to legitimize the ruling dynasty. Kosmas’ work was updated and extended by several authors in the latter part of the 12th and during the 13th centuries.
During the first part of the 13th century, the Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia began to expand their political and economic influence westward and came into contact with the political and cultural kingdoms of Western Europe. This cultural exchange was evident in literature through the introduction of German courtly poetry, or minnesang, in the latter part of the 13th century. After the murder of Wenceslas III and the subsequent upheavals in the kingdom in 1306, however, the nobles began to distance themselves from Western culture and looked for literature in their native tongue. Despite this, German remained an important literary language in Bohemia until the 19th century.
This new literature in Czech consisted largely of epic poetry of two types: the legend and the knightly epic, both based on apocryphal tales from the Bible, as well as hagiographic legends of earlier periods. In addition to epic poetry, lyric poetry also appeared during the course of the 14th century, generally in the form of religious songs. These tended toward simplicity of form of content on one hand, and striving toward maximum expression on the other. The first development of prose also took place during this period: administrative and teaching texts, which necessitated the development of a more extensive and specialized vocabulary (the first Czech-Latin dictionaries date from this time), and extensive chronicles, of which the Chronicle of Dalimil, written roughly 1309, and Chronicon Aulae Regiae (the Zbraslav Chronicle), are the two best examples.
15th century, Hussites
The Hussite revolution of the 15th century created a definite break in the literary evolution of Czech literature and forms its own separate history within Czech literature as a whole. The aim of this literature was mainly to communicate and argue for a religious doctrine – the form was generally prose. Jan Hus’ theological writing first appears at the beginning of the 15th century and the later literature of the period can be most easily divided by the religious conviction of its authors: the Catholics, the moderate Prague faction of Hussites, and the radical Taborite faction. Hus wrote first in Latin, later in Czech and this divide remained for much of the later period: poetry and intellectual prose used primarily Latin, whereas popular prose was written in Czech and German. Hus’ writings center on technical, theological questions; however, he did publish a set of his Czech sermons and created a style of writing and grammar that would later be used to create the foundations of modern Czech in the 17th and 18th centuries. His Postila, a tract on religion, remained one of the most oft-printed books until the 17th century. His follower Jakoubek of Stříbro also compiled his own sermons as Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana (An Explanation of the Appearance of St. John), one of the largest works of the 15th century. Only fragments remain of the literary works of the radical Taborite faction – Mikuláš Biskupec z Pelhřimova wrote the most significant works, Latin apologia defending the Taborite doctrine. Petr Chelčický was an oddity of the period – he worked in isolation but in his youth had been a radical Hussite. His work, Siet viery (The Net of Faith) is a scathing critique of the contemporary Church and society, a call to a new kind of basic Christianity. In general, Hussite writings differed from the preceding era by their focus on social questions – their audience was the common people and lower middle classes. The third faction, the Catholics, also wrote works defending Catholicism and attacking the Hussite ultraquists - Jan Rokycana was the leading figure.
In addition to prose works, the Hussite period for the first time truly developed the genre of religious songs as replacement for Latin hymns and mass: the largest surviving compendium, the Jistebnický kancionál (The Jistebnice Hymnal), contains Czech translations of Latin liturgy, religious hymns, and songs to be sung at vespers.
Humanism
After the election of George of Poděbrady to the Czech throne following the Hussite wars, a new cultural wave swept into Bohemia: humanism, which saw in the classics of antiquity the ideal of literature and culture. The roots of humanist thought reach back to the court of Charles IV, who brought Italian scholars to his court, but its flowering is associated with the rule of the Jagiellon dynasty and later Habsburg rulers until the Battle of White Mountain. The main feature of the literature of this period is the competition between Catholic and Protestant thought, and the influence of the printing press, which made written works more accessible and thus slowly changed the status of literary work in society. The new humanistic writing also laid heavier demands on the Czech language and thus created a richer and more complex grammatical structure and vocabulary based upon Latin. The use of Latin became restricted to the Catholic schools, whereas German was confined to the German Protestants living in Bohemia.
Of the Latin-speaking humanists, the most important were Bohuslav Hasištejnský, (Ad sanctum Venceslaum satyra (Complaint to St. Wenceslas), and Elegia de peregrinatione sua (Elegy of his Wanderings)); and Jan Dubravius, (De nuptiis Mercurii et Philogiae (The Marriage of Mercury and Philology) - an extensive encyclopedia of the free arts, Theriobulia (The Congress of Animals) - a didactic-political poem written for king Ludwig Jagiello, Historiae Regno Bohemiae...libri XXXIII (History of the Bohemian Kindgom...in 33 volumes) - a similarly themed book for the emperor Maxmilian of Habsburg, and the technical manual De piscinis (On fishponds)).
At the apogee of humanism, Czech writings focused more on teaching and popular books. Jan Melantrich founded a Czech printing house in Prague, and his son-in-law and heir, Daniel Adam of Veleslavín ran it for a period of some 20 years. During this time, Veleslavín supported and encouraged the whole of humanistic literary efforts of his time, and his influence on both the quality of works and the language used were decided. Other notable Czech-speaking humanists were Viktorin Kornel z Všehrd, (O práviech, o súdiech i o dskách země České knihy devatery (Nine Volumes on the Laws, Judgments, and Land Decrees of the Czech Lands) and Václav Hájek, whose Kronika Česká (The Czech Chronicle), which, although not based upon critical evaluation of sources, continued to serve as fodder for many generations of Czech writers. The pinnacle of Czech humanist efforts was the Hussite-led complete translation of the Bible: Biblí České, commonly called the Kralická Bible.
Baroque
The defeat of the Czech Protestants at the Battle of White Mountain decidedly affected Czech literary development. The forceful re-Catholicization and Germanization of Bohemia and the ensuing confiscations and expulsions virtually eliminated the Protestant middle classes and split the literature into two parts: the domestic Catholic and the émigré Protestant branches. Unlike other European countries of the time, the nobility in Bohemia was not a part of the literary audience and thus this split of literary effort led to a certain lack of development of Czech baroque literature in comparison to other European countries of the time, especially in genres that were written for noble courts (love and occasion poetry, stage works, etc.)
The largest personality of Czech evangelical baroque writing is Jan Amos Komenský, who spent his youth in Bohemia but was forced into exile later in life. He was a pedagogue, theologian, reformer of schools, and philosopher; his works include language textbooks, theoretical tracts about education, and works on theology. His Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart, a literary parable of turmoil in human existence at the beginning of the 16th century, remains a period classic. With his death in the early 18th century, Protestant literature in Czech virtually disappeared.
Catholic baroque works span two types: poetry and prose. Poetry of the Catholic baroque is concerned largely with religious hymns. The largest figures of the genre were Adam Michna z Otradovic (Loutna česká, Česká mariánská muzika, and Svatoroční muzika (The Czech Lute, Czech Marian Music, and Christmas Music)), Fridrich Bridel, and Václav Jan Rosa, who laid the groundwork for the rules of metered poetry in Czech and compiled the Thesauras linguae Bohemicae (A Treasury of Czech Language), the first etymological dictionary of the Czech language. Baroque prose focused mainly on homiletic prose, hagiography, and historical accounts; Bohuslav Balbín was the leading figure with his Miscellanea historica regni Bohemiae (Miscellany from the History of the Bohemian Kingdom), a 20-volume encyclopedia of Czech history. The new Jesuit order also commissioned a new translation of the Bible known as the St. Wenceslas Bible, which, despite its intent, directly continued the work of the Bible Kralická and even earlier Hussite translations.
Reawakening
At the close of the baroque period, a new trend in thinking emerged: enlightened classicism, which sought to apply the principles of science to all aspects of daily life. In literature, this meant a renewed interest in prose novels, in history and the historical development of a national culture. A culture in one’s own language began to be seen as the prerequisite for the unification of a nation. In Bohemia, the religious sources that had inspired Czech baroque literature of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century slowly dried up and literary development stagnated due to the absence of Czech nobility and a middle class that could support literature in the national language. However, at the close of the 18th century, the Bohemian lands went through a considerable change – the Habsburg emperor Joseph II ended feudalism and instated a new religious and ideological tolerance. This was reflected in the literature as a renewed interest in rediscovering and reinstating the Czech language and history. Both the audience and the background of creators of literature evolved from priests and monks to the laity and general public and even the very definition of literature changed, from encompassing all written works to the idea of artistic literary expression. Bohemia, however, remained within the sphere of Austrian and German cultural influence, and thus the new national literature developed inside of and in response to the German culture preferred by the state. Czech literature thus evolved from first mimicking popular German genres and only later to independent creative efforts.
From the first half of the 18th century, initial efforts to reevaluate the previous era using scientific methods were made in Bohemia, seeking out the myths in Czech history. These first scientists banded together into private scientific societies, allowing them to share information and knowledge. Among the most notable authors were Josef Dobrovský (who codified the grammar of the Czech language through his Ausführliches Lehrgebäude der böhmischen Sprache (Complete Grammar of the Czech Language)), and Antonín Jaroslav Puchmayer (one of the first poets to systematically develop Czech poetry). Drama and the theater also served as an arena in which to develop the new Czech literary culture – at first, mostly by imitation of popular Viennese plays, later through original productions. Václav Kliment Klicpera was the greatest playwright of the period.
One of the challenges of this generation was the genre of popular fiction, because the literary public simply was not there - in order to begin to cultivate a readership for Czech literature, Matěj Václav Kramerius began to publish a newspaper in Czech and ran a publishing house, whose book production encompassed popular fiction as well as translations of foreign language classics.
1800s - Czech classical literature
Pre-romanticism
Pre-romanticism formed the transition between enlightened classicism and romanticism – pre-romantics did not completely abandon the emphasis on forms drawn from antiquity, but relaxed the strict separation between the genres and turned away from didactic genres toward more lyric, folk-inspired works. The epitome of these efforts was “ohlas” poetry, which sought to create works indistinguishable from authentic folk literature. It was during this period that the idea of a truly national literature and culture developed as a rejection of Bernard Bolzano’s vision of a bi-lingual and bi-cultural Czech-German state.
The era is often named after Josef Jungmann, who translated many classics of world literature and spent his life establishing Czech literature as a serious, rich literature capable of great development. His handbook Slovesnost aneb Sbírka příkladů s krátkým pojednáním o slohu (A Collection of Examples including a Short Essay on Writing) served as the standard grammar handbook for the next two generations of writers. František Palacký and Pavel Jozef Šafárik took up the challenge of revising Czech history, building upon the work done by Dobrovský, but focused on the earliest history of the Czech lands in the context of Slavic history as a whole. As part of the effort to establish the pedigree of Czech literature, Czech historians of the time sought evidence of heroic epics of the Middle Ages. They appeared to find such evidence in the Rukopis královédvorský and Rukopis zelenohorský (The Manuscript from Hradec Králové and Zelená Hora, respectively), although both were later proved to have been falsified. These manuscripts sought to emulate epic poetry by incorporating mythology from Hájek’s history of the Bohemian kingdom and as such are effective poetry in their own right.
Lyric poetry was the chief poetic genre of the time – the greatest poet of the time was Jan Kollár, who in Slávy dcera (The Slav Daughter) created an ideal hero journeying throughout the Slavic countries discovering his own inner life and the commonalities shared by Slavic nations. František Ladislav Čelakovský was the chief proponent of “ohlas” poetry, poetry based upon folk forms but incorporating modern themes. However, by the end of the period this type of poetry began to be criticized as hindering the development of modern poetry and was abandoned for the ideal of fully romantic expression.
Romantism – Biedermeier
By the 1830s, the foundations of Czech literature were laid and authors now began to focus more on the artistic merits of their work and less on developing the idea of Czech literature and culture as a whole. During this time period two main types of literature were produced: literature of the Biedermeier, which strove to educate the reader and encourage him to be a loyal subject of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and romanticism, which emphasized the freedom of the individual and focused on the subjective and subconscious thoughts of an individual. Representatives of the two types of thought critiqued the approaches of the other, but also incorporated them into their work. Karel Hynek Mácha was the foremost of the romantics, and the influence of his work Máj (May) lasted well into the turn of the century. The lyric-epic poem focuses on the thoughts and life story of a convicted murderer awaiting his unavoidable execution, and who thus serves as the ideal romantic hero. Josef Kajetán Tyl was foremost a stage author of the period, but his literary magazine Květy (Blooms) (1833–45) provided a forum for other artists to publish. In fact, newspapers in general became a forum for other authors of the period – Karel Havlíček Borovský gained great fame through his newspaper columns and satires.
Of the great authors more oriented toward the Biedermeier ideal, the first, Karel Jaromír Erben, focused on preserving Czech folklore; he collected and systematically organized folk songs and fairy tales. His main original work, Kytice (The Bouquet), used these as a basis for a collection of ballads. Božena Němcová, the first great female Czech author, also collected folk fairy tales, but her greatest work, Babička (Grandmother), presents an idealized picture of life in a Czech village.
Almanac May
The year 1948 brought to the fore a new generation of Czech authors who followed in the footsteps of K. H. Mácha and who published their work in the new almanac Máj (May). Unlike the contemporaries of Jungmann, who heavily criticized the almanac, these authors saw people as unfettered by national borders and ideologies, and rejected the narrow ideal of a national culture for one that incorporated Czech literature into European culture and drew inspiration from the progress made outside of the Czech lands. These authors, however, also saw the changes in society since the poem Máj had been published, and so their work also commented on the encroachment of industrialization and focused increasingly on the ordinary life as opposed to the unfettered romantic ideal. In order to secure their own futures, these authors also saw it as their mission to educate and improve the quality of their readers by presenting their audience with progressive themes and quality work.
Vítězslav Hájek led the magazine Květy and was an active poet and writer of feuilletons, whose work ranged from love ballads to short stories. His work remained intensely popular for the next several decades. This era was also saw the birth of the women’s movement led by the author Karolina Světlá, who first recognized and projected the problems of modern life onto the Czech village, imbuing the former stories of idyllic life with dramatic intensity. The most famous author of this generation, however, is Jan Neruda, whose work included feuilletons and bitterly ironic and skeptical poetry, but who is most famous for short stories set in modern day Prague, illuminating the life of ordinary people and the criminal classes.
Neo-romantics
The May generation was followed by the neo-romantics, who again split into two schools of thought. One school focused on developing art and culture not to represent Czech culture to the world, but simply for its own sake; the other rejected any literature that was not mindful of local traditions and culture. These authors continued in the romantic tradition, but also incorporated more contemporary styles: realism, symbolism, decadence. Three periods are apparent: the first reacted to the disappointment in the lack of political and social progress during the 1870’s; the second was the great return to poetry, especially epic poetry; and the third focused on prose (short stories and novels.)
Representatives of the first wave are the poet Václav Šolc and Jakub Arbes, who gained fame writing the romaneto, the precursor to the modern detective story. Josef Václav Sládek was perhaps the greatest poet of the second wave – he led the magazine Lumír (which collected the work of many of his contemporaries) and became known as the first truly national Czech poet. Svatopluk Čech lived in isolation for much of his life, but wrote immensely popular epic and political poetry and satirical prose. Jaroslav Vrchlický, the most publicly decorated poet of this generation and who served in myriad other official capacities besides his literary career, made his name composing poetry that both held up the ideal of a perfect togetherness of mankind, and that sharply criticized the lack of this brotherhood in contemporary society. Julius Zeyer was the last of the great poets of the second wave of the neo-romantics – he wrote mainly poetic prose and epic poetry.
The third wave of the neo-romantics, whose authors wrote mainly prose, leaned heavily toward historical subjects: the two main proponents were Alois Jirásek, who wrote expansive novels based upon Czech history, and Zikmund Winter, whose first love was history and thus his work borders on non-fiction in its historical accuracy.
Realistic-naturalistic literature
In conversation with the neo-romantics, the next generation of authors leaned toward realism and naturalism, often coupled with the political realism advocated by T. G. Masaryk. These authors tended toward prose and renewed interest in the ordinary and banal, in contrast to the more flighty neo-romantics. In their efforts to portray the world accurately, they favored contemporary subjects over historical ones (since to them the past cannot be known accurately enough), and sought to deemphasize the personal voice of the author in comparison to the often highly colored speech of the characters. Two main topics of prose were of interest: one was the exploration of the Czech village, and the extent to which it remained an oasis of better morals or was corrupted by the cities – Jan Herben, Karel Václav Rais, and Alois Mrštík were the principal authors. The other was Prague – these authors, chiefly Ignát Herrman and Karel Matěj Čapek Chod, continued the tradition of Neruda and presented life in the capital both from the perspective of the upper classes and the lowest of the low.
Modernism
The last literary generation of the 19th century signaled a decided break with the past and the advent of modernism – after the wave of optimism in the wake of the French Revolution at the beginning of the century, the lack of progress in implementing these ideals of freedom and brotherhood led to both a skepticism toward the possibility of ever achieving these ideals, and renewed efforts to do so. The common link between authors of this generation is their adherence to a particular style over their own voices, and their often very critical perspectives on the work of the previous generations. The modernists also inaugurated the cult of the artist, the idea that an artist is an outsider in society, beholden only to himself and his work. This period also saw the birth of the literary critic as an independent profession, as an ally of the artist, helping to both define and present work to the public. The greatest of these was František Xaver Šalda, who rejected the prevailing styles - realism, symbolism, impressionism, and decadence - as individually too narrow, and instead advocated their synthesis in literature. He was also one of the signatories of the manifest of the Czech Modernists, who sharply distanced themselves from the older generations and sought to declare their revolutionary ambitions.
The harshest of these critics of the old generation was the poet Josef Svatopluk Machar, who spoke to primarily the youth of his time through his satirical, ironic poetry and feuilletons. This generation produced two more poets of stature, Antonín Sova, whose prolific output mirrors the differing styles in vogue during the turn of the century, and Otokar Březina, a great symbolist poet in his youth and essayist in his later years.
Modernist prose laid great emphasis on ornamented, stylized prose – of the many active prose authors, Vilém Mrštík bridged the various styles from realism to impressionism, from the Secession to the beginnings of expressionism, and also strove to incorporate foreign authors and their works into Czech literature. Růžena Svobodová's work is the typical example of ornamented prose of the turn of the century, whereas Josef Karel Šlejhar continued the tradition of using motifs from rural Czech life.
20th century
Between 1918 and 1938, Czechoslovakia was a modern, democratic state (in 1938 – 1939, it was destroyed by Hitler´s Nazi Germany, after France and Britain refused to fulfil their treaty obligations to protect Czechoslovakia´s independence at Munich in September 1938). Internationally, especially in the English speaking world, the most well known writer of the inter-war period was Karel Čapek, the creator of the word "robot" (see his expressionist play Rossum´s Universal Robots from the 1920s, it was staged, among other places, also on Broadway.)
In the interwar period Czechoslovakia saw the flowering of its poetic talent. A number of major poets emerged (František Halas, Vítězslav Nezval, Jaroslav Seifert (was was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in the 1980s) Vladimír Holan, Josef Hora); most of their work is, regrettably, locked within the incomprehensible Czech language. The Czechs created their own, independent poetic style, "poetism", the art of "modern civilisation, exoticism, playfulness". (Karel Teige was the theoretician of the Czech interwar avantgarde, (for further info, see the book by Alfred French, The Poets of Prague). Poetism, quite naturally, later developed into surrealism. Czechoslovakia had a strong surrealist tradition both in poetry and in the visual arts in the interwar period.
Czech literature and culture played a major role on at least two occasions when Czech society lived under oppression and no political activity was possible. On both of these occasions, in the early 19th century and then again in the 1960s, the Czechs used their cultural and literary effort to create political freedom and to establish a confident, politically aware nation.
This cultural "drive for freedom" in the 1960s was put a stop to by the Warsaw Pact invasion of August 1968, after which strict neostalinist rule was imposed upon Czechoslovakia. Some 400 hundred Czech writers were banned. Some of them went into exile, where they created a vibrant, independent literature and publishing culture in the diaspora. The contact of these authors with different cultures and their testimony about how they attempted to come to terms with integration to foreign societies, provides rather interesting early evidence about globalisation.
Small emigré publishing houses were created by Czech independent authors in the West, in particular from the early 1970s. Perhaps the most well known was Josef Škvorecký´s 68 Publishers in Toronto, Canada, another one was Index in Munich, Germany. Books, published in Czech in there publishing houses often later appeared in translation into West European languages.
By far the best-known Czech emigré author is Milan Kundera who has lived in France since 1975, and has written in French since 1989. Josef Škvorecký became quite well known on the American continent in the 1980s, having been awarded the Neustadt Prize for Literature in 1980. Arnošt Lustig has had a following in the US as an important author of holocaust literature.
Of those authors who remained in Czechoslovakia, poet Miroslav Holub became extremely well-known internationally, especially in the English speaking world. Absurdist plays by Václav Havel, dissident writer in the 1970s and 1980s, and Czechoslovak/Czech President in the 1990, are also important. Bohumil Hrabal was perhaps the most innovative Czech 20th century writer, both in style and in subject matter.
Since the fall of communism, the importance of Czech literature has receded somewhat. Immediately after the fall of communism, the Czech public was very much interested in the "forbidden fruit" of "dissident" and "emigré" literature, but the interest quickly subsided, when the book market was flooded by previously banned literature, which now, after the fall of communism, seem to relate to a "bygone" era.
In the 1990s, Czech literature has been a minority subject, cultivated and followed mostly by a handful of enthusiasts. Perhaps the only contemporary Czech author, who can make a living by writing fiction, is Michael Viewegh, a prolific author of commercial entertainment, "Bridget Jonesian" books about erotic relationships between the sexes. Viewegh is an extremely good craftsman and has an ironic sense of humour. Some of his works are better than "Bridget Jones" and, as the author ages and is beginning to realise that there must be perhaps more to life than sex between yuppies, his later works are more profound than his earlier output.
On the whole, though, contemporary Czech literature (since 1989) is relatively marginalised. Its place has been taken over by contemporary Czech cinema, which has been particularly vibrant over the past 10 years or so, bringing distant reminiscences of the famous "Czech New Wave" in the cinema of the 1960s.
Important Czech authors not mentioned above
Ordered roughly chronologically, by era the centre of given author's work falls into.
The oldest period
Between 1750 and 1860 (Modern Bohemian Literature)
Between 1860 and 1910 (Modern Bohemian Literature II)
Between WWI and WWII
Communist Era
Contemporary
See also
External links
