Petr Janecek
PETR JANEČEK (*1978) – Associate Professor ("Docent") at the Department of Ethnology and Cultura Anthropology, Institute of Ethnology and Central European and Balkan Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic (Assistant Professor since 2012, Associate Professor since 2019, 2014-2023 Deputy Director, since 2023 Head of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology) and external lecturer at the Institute of European Ethnology, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, West Bohemian University in Pilsen and other Czech and Slovak universities.
His professional interests include contemporary collective forms of expressive culture (especially verbal folklore - legends, rumours, anecdotes and conspiracy theories), theory, methodology and history of European Ethnology and Folkloristics, and theoretical aspects of intangible cultural heritage.
He used to work as the Head of the Ethnographical Department of the Historical Museum of the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic (2008–2012).
His main international publications include monograph "Spring Man. Belief Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture (Studies in Folklore and Ethnology: Traditions, Practices, and Identities, Rowman and Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2022), chapter "Werewolf as the Slavic an Germanic „Other“: Czech Werewolf legends between oral and popular culture" published in Blécourt, Wilhelm - Mencej, Mirjam (eds.): "Werewolf Legends" (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Springer/Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), and chapter "ICH in the Czech Republic Between National and Local Heritage" published in Davis, Peter – Stefano, Michelle (eds.): "The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage (Routledge, 2017). His most important scholarly works published in Czech are "Mýtus o pérákovi. Městská legenda mezi folklorem a populární kulturou" (Argo 2017), a series of five annotated collections of Czech contemporary legend, rumours and ghost stories titled "Černá sanitka" and "Krvavá Máří" (2006; 2007; 2008; 2015, 2020) as well as various book chapters and articles on contemporary folklore in English and Czech (including journals such as Fabula, Diogenes, Estudis de Literatura Oral Popular, Slovak Ethnology, and others). He is also editor of the collective monograph "Folklor atomového věku. Kolektivně sdílené prvky expresivní kultury v současné české společnosti" (2011) and, with Thomas A. McKean, of collection of abstractst titled "Ballads and Memory. International Ballad Conference of the Kommission für Volksdichtung. August 31 - Septermber 3, 2018, Ethnographic Museum, National Museum, Prague (2018); and, with Elizabeth Tucker and Elissa R. Henken, of collection of abstracts titled "Perspectives on Contemporary Legend. International Society for Contemporary Legend Research 32nd International Conference. Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. Prague, Czech Republic. Tuesday 3—Sunday 8 June, 2014. Conference Abstracts" (2014).
Address: Institute of Ethnology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
His professional interests include contemporary collective forms of expressive culture (especially verbal folklore - legends, rumours, anecdotes and conspiracy theories), theory, methodology and history of European Ethnology and Folkloristics, and theoretical aspects of intangible cultural heritage.
He used to work as the Head of the Ethnographical Department of the Historical Museum of the National Museum in Prague, Czech Republic (2008–2012).
His main international publications include monograph "Spring Man. Belief Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture (Studies in Folklore and Ethnology: Traditions, Practices, and Identities, Rowman and Littlefield/Lexington Books, 2022), chapter "Werewolf as the Slavic an Germanic „Other“: Czech Werewolf legends between oral and popular culture" published in Blécourt, Wilhelm - Mencej, Mirjam (eds.): "Werewolf Legends" (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Springer/Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), and chapter "ICH in the Czech Republic Between National and Local Heritage" published in Davis, Peter – Stefano, Michelle (eds.): "The Routledge Companion to Intangible Cultural Heritage (Routledge, 2017). His most important scholarly works published in Czech are "Mýtus o pérákovi. Městská legenda mezi folklorem a populární kulturou" (Argo 2017), a series of five annotated collections of Czech contemporary legend, rumours and ghost stories titled "Černá sanitka" and "Krvavá Máří" (2006; 2007; 2008; 2015, 2020) as well as various book chapters and articles on contemporary folklore in English and Czech (including journals such as Fabula, Diogenes, Estudis de Literatura Oral Popular, Slovak Ethnology, and others). He is also editor of the collective monograph "Folklor atomového věku. Kolektivně sdílené prvky expresivní kultury v současné české společnosti" (2011) and, with Thomas A. McKean, of collection of abstractst titled "Ballads and Memory. International Ballad Conference of the Kommission für Volksdichtung. August 31 - Septermber 3, 2018, Ethnographic Museum, National Museum, Prague (2018); and, with Elizabeth Tucker and Elissa R. Henken, of collection of abstracts titled "Perspectives on Contemporary Legend. International Society for Contemporary Legend Research 32nd International Conference. Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. Prague, Czech Republic. Tuesday 3—Sunday 8 June, 2014. Conference Abstracts" (2014).
Address: Institute of Ethnology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
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Books by Petr Janecek
The chapter surveys werewolf legends collected on the territory of the Czech lands and tries to interpret their relative scarcity (compared to neighbouring countries such as Poland or Slovakia) with special emphasis on complicated relationship between oral and popular culture. Although earliest literary mentions of werevolves in the Czech Lands can be found as early as 13th century (Czech version of Alexandreis), oral legends are very scarce and heavily influenced by literature. Romantic Nationalists of the early 19th century produced several falsified medieval accounts on supposed Czech oral tradition on werewolves which equated these beings with Roman fauns and lupercales. Few narratives collected in oral tradition are very similar, using tropes from contemporary literature and popular press. Typical example is supposedly authentic oldest Czech werewolf legend, published by Josef Virgil Grohmann in his Sagen-Buch von Böhmen und Mähren: Sagen aus Böhmen (1863) where we find love-struck werewolf charmed by forest fairy who also refuses to eat meat and steals snacks of the foresters instead. Most Czech and German folk legends collections of the 19th and early 20th century, however, simply do not record any werewolf legends at all. This situation changes in the mid-1900s. Werewolves, already perceived as non-Czech phenomenon, enjoyed popularity immediately after the Second World War with contemporary legends and rumours of the times based on atrocities of the Nazi Werwolf secret organization, supposedly wreaking havoc in Czech borderlands. These modern folk narratives not only strenghtened the idea of Czech werewolves as being Germanic, but also helped werewolf legends to finally enter Czech oral tradition (and popular consciousness) in greater numbers. Especially since the early 1980s, werewolf became one of the most important demonic characters of campfire legends, children´s folklore, and ghost stories. Along with generic vampires, Bloody Marys and zombies, these modern werewolves – in very similar way as their precessedors in the 19th century – owes much to contemporary popular culture. Many of them still retain their „Germanic“ label.
An Urban Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture
During the last years of the Second World War, the Nazi-occupied Czech lands were overrun by legends and rumours about a mysterious jumping phantom. Usually called "the springer" or "the spring man" (pérák or pérový muž), this urban apparition was said to be able to jump to extraordinary heights with the aid of a remarkable spring-like mechanism attached to his boots. The stories about the spring man were thought to have started in Prague, the Czech capital then suffering under a curfew and a brutal daily regime imposed by the Gestapo. The stories soon spread to other big cities, and from there to rest of the country. The spring man began to be sighted almost everywhere — leaping over the rooftops of tall buildings, over trains and trams, over ravines and river valleys. Some claimed that the spring man was secretly fighting the Nazis: he supposedly stole their equipment, damaged their weapons and sabotaged work in war industry. Instead of fearing him, people began to venerate the spring man as some kind of superhero, a Superman or Batman-like mythical figure helping Czech resistance fighters and partisans. Stories about this mysterious, bullet-proof resistance fighter, jumping over rooftops with steel springs on his feet and fighting the Nazis and their collaborators, soon spread throughout most of the Czech lands, helping real partisans and resistance fighters and lifting the spirits of the oppressed nation.
That is how the story of the spring man is usually told in contemporary Czech popular culture. The historical content and context of narratives about this phantom were, however, as this book tries to show, much more complicated. The romantic image of the spring man as a mythical anti-Nazi resistance fighter can be found in almost all kinds of pop-cultural narratives devoted to this character, from newspaper articles, animated films and literary fiction of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, to contemporary comics, novels, plays, and graffiti. But like other mythical characters later immortalised by popular fiction, the ur-spring man, the original form of this imaginary phantom, was of far more complicated — and far more humble — origin in oral tradition.
The main goal of this book is to document, analyse and interpret the phenomenon of the spring man in broader historical, geographical, social, cultural, and especially folkloric and pop-cultural context. The book aims to reconstruct the history and “cultural evolution” of this peculiar phenomenon. Contrary to the pop-cultural stereotype associating the spring man during the Second World War only with the Czech lands (or even only with Prague), this book conceptualizes this phenomenon as a “merely” regional or national version (ecotype) of a migratory international legend and of a narrative-cultural complex associated with this legend. This complex originated in Great Britain during the first decades of the 19th century, when so-called “prowling ghosts” appeared in working-class culture as a unique cultural expression of industrialized urban society. A specific amalgamation of oral narratives, ostensive cultural practices, vernacular festivities and early forms of mass culture, had been thriving in working-class communities in most British industrial centres since the end of the 18th century. Most importantly, this cultural amalgamation gave birth to the historical predecessor of the Czech spring man, a (sub)urban jumping phantom usually called Spring-heeled Jack, who was most popular between 1837 and 1877. After 1904, the narrative-cultural complex about Spring-Heeled Jack was then restructured as it became an international legend that migrated to several other European territories, most notably Russia, Germany and the Czech lands. In the present book, the main focus is on the specifically Czech version of the legend, which rechristened the British Spring-heeled Jack as the spring man. The book also discusses other, older cases of Czech prowling ghosts (which, however, lack the motif of peculiar jumping), such as the famous Phantom of Podskalí (Podskalské strašidlo) of 1874, the Phantom of Holešovice (Holešovické strašidlo) of 1876 and the Phantom of Libeň (Libeňské strašidlo) of 1907, which created ghost panics and urban scares in Prague’s working-class milieu. Detailed analysis is devoted especially to the gradual formation of the character of the spring man out of these products of working-class culture, beginning in the early 1920s, continuing through the character’s moment of greatest popularity in Czech oral culture in the 1940, 50s and 60s, and then concluding with the spring man’s slow fading into passive folklore repertoires after the early 1970s. This historical development is documented with 168 oral narratives and interviews, conducted with 85 narrators and informants. A detailed interpretation is also offered of the process of transfer of this motif from the communicative memory of oral narratives and cultural practices to the cultural memory of mass-mediated popular culture, which culminated after 2002.
Throughout, the book’s main emphasis is on the gradual simplification of this originally complicated and ambivalent folkloric being in Czech culture after World War II. The spring man was reduced not only chronologically (to a phenomenon existing only during the war) but also spatially (as a phenomenon existing only in the Czech lands or only in Prague). This historical and geographical reduction was accompanied by a strong ideologization of the character, which consisted mostly in the spring man’s anthropomorphisation, heroicisation and nationalisation. The jumping phantom came to be used by several political ideologies, such as postwar communism, Czech nationalism, social critique of the so-called “normalization” period of the 1970s and 80s, the antiglobalization movement of the early 2000s and, most recently, contemporary street anti-fascism. Since 2002, the spring man has also become popular in other discourses such as ufology, Forteana, the steampunk and dieselpunk movements and contemporary public discussion about Czech collective guilt and collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War.
The main argumentative arc of the book is provided by a comparison of two “ideal types” of spring man: the ambivalent and monstrous urban phantom of oral legends and rumours of the 20th century, and the idealized and positive mythical superhero of non-oral pop-cultural products of the 21st century. Attention is also given to “transitional” forms of these two polarizations of this character: the nostalgic and ideologised literary hero connected with children’s literature and memoirs. Differences between these two “ideal types” (phantom and superhero) are interpreted not only in terms of the content of narratives, but also genealogically, through comparison of various genres and rhetorical devices, and contextually, through analysis of changes in the aesthetic and cultural tastes of Czech audiences. Special attention is paid to the inherent nature of the different modes of collective memory involved in the dissemination of spring man narratives: communicative memory, using spoken word and shared time and space with other people (characterized by legend, rumour and personal experience narratives as main rhetorical tools used), and cultural memory, using symbolically coded texts materialized to non-oral media forms (especially popular literature, comics, film and drama). This dynamic and almost dialectical proces of interplay between communicative and cultural memory, oral and popular culture, and private and public spheres characterises the peculiar character of the spring man in his many manifestations up to the present day.
Four examples of such groups with collective tradition found in contemporary society of the Czech Republic – children, soldiers in compulsory military service, Czech tramps and musical subcultures – which can be alternativelly labelled as subcultures, folk groups or bearers of contemporary folk traditions – are presented and examined in the book.
The book is divided into thirteen chapters according to prevalent theme of the contemporary legends included. The first chapter, Murderers, Deviants and Spectres deals with horror and criminal legends, second chapter, Treacherous Aliens contains rumors about aliens and ethnic minorities, third chapter, Unexpected Ingredients deals with rumors about ethnic restaurants and fast foods. Fauna and Flora contains legends about dreadful contaminations and unfortunate pets, Sex and Erotic deals with legends about sexual affairs and embarassing situations, Alcohol and Drugs contains contemporary druglore and party stories. Injuries, Accidents and Mistakes describes popular narratives about hilarious accidents, Automobile contains legends about cars and driving, Public City Transit and Railway deals with stories localized in trams, buses and trains. Elementary School and Children Camp contains children folklore and superstitions, High School and University describes student and academic folklore, For Witnesses contains narratives connected to personalities and places of the 1980s – last years of rule of Communist regime. Last chapter, Offices and Bureaus, deals with contemporary office folklore.
Majority of Czech contemporary legends and rumors seem to have international parallels across Europe and other continents; genesis of some can be traced at least to the 1960s. One of the most popular Czech legends seems to be The Black Ambulance. This story about mysterious car kidnapping children was widespread mainly in the 1980s. Other legends and rumors popular in the Czech Republic are stories about hilarious accidents and recent bussiness folklore about supermarkets and ethnic restaurants.
"
Papers by Petr Janecek
such as „urban legends“, rumour or gossip has been always
afflicted by artifical gaps between various academical fields, most
notably between social sciences (social anthropology, sociology)
and humanities (folkloristics, literary science). Presented article
briefly sumarizes some of the most interesting main theories - but
also defficiences - of contemporary folklore studies in fields of
folkloristics, literary theory, social antropology and sociology, and
calls for multidisciplinary analysis of this phenomenon.
The authors seek to present examples of mutual interactions between the interpretations of local events and global conspiracy theories, as well as updates or later reinterpretations of older conspiracy motives. In addition to topical texts responding to the specific position of both countries between the East and the West, the paper also focuses on the events accompanying the creation of the common state of Slovaks and Czechs, the Second World War period, the rule of the Communist regime, and the events related to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the so-called Velvet Revolution in 1989. The analysis will focus on group-shared images of the enemy and the argumentation strategies used in different types of discourses.
Last but not least, the study will also bring a comparison of the Czech and Slovak contexts, as in spite of the period of the common state there are big differences in some characteristic features of the Czech and Slovak societies in some areas, which is also reflected in the “conspiracy culture”.
The article deals with critical analysis of contemporary acceptance of the intangible cultural heritage concept in field of European ethnology. European ethnology has strong historic experience with making the key analytical terms of its study (“folk”, “traditional folk culture”, “folklore”, “tradition”) problematical. In its long history, these terms were more times redefined, deconstructed or even fully abandoned. In the last years, external as well as internal criticism of this traditional ethnological terminology led to a quick acceptance of an applied and originally political term “intangible cultural heritage” that was primarily created for the UNESCO international agenda. Unlike the above mentioned traditional ethnological terms, this concept features a lot of undoubted advantages (modern understanding of culture as a process and practice, not only as a product; social construction of its meaning; taking into consideration the community´s and society´s decision about its passing down from generation to generation; international consensus about its meaning). On the other hand, however, it brings about a lot of problematical facts (derivation from an unclearly defined applied concept of “heritage”; nature of a mere enumeration of designates; weak theoretical reflexion of the concept in the contrast with its strong political and ideological background). On a ground of the concise overview Begriffgeschichte, i.e. a brief history of the European ethnology´s terminology, the essay tries to find a corresponding position for this concept and to contemplate its role for this unusual discipline that is located at the boundary line between historiography, social sciences and humanities.
narratives. This phenomenon, extensively studied by Western folklorists since the 1970s, is closely connected to a wider discourse of children and youth ghostlore, and interpreted as a girls’ ritual reflecting prepubescent menstrual anxiety, reflexion of process of ontological psychological development devoted to mastering emotion of fear of schoolchildren, or, in later adolescence, a reflexion of archetypal self-development processes in a Jungian sense.
The paper, using data documented during longitudinal field research of Czech contemporary folklore, presents the growing popularity of this expressive practice in a Czech setting in the last fifteen years, starting with the late 1990s. Comparing the Czech situation with similar cultural processes analyzed in Sweden, Spain, and especially Russia, the paper describes the diffusion of this practice by global popular culture and its glocalization to suit peculiar Czech youth ghostlore inspired by historical personages. Reflecting global, ever-shifting contemporary culture flows, especially changes in local realities of “ethnoscapes”, “mediascapes” and “ideoscapes”during the 1990s, the practice of invoking Krvavá Máří seem to be both parallel and the transformation of local practices such as schoolchildren’s
spiritism and horror stories of the 1970s and 1980s.
The chapter surveys werewolf legends collected on the territory of the Czech lands and tries to interpret their relative scarcity (compared to neighbouring countries such as Poland or Slovakia) with special emphasis on complicated relationship between oral and popular culture. Although earliest literary mentions of werevolves in the Czech Lands can be found as early as 13th century (Czech version of Alexandreis), oral legends are very scarce and heavily influenced by literature. Romantic Nationalists of the early 19th century produced several falsified medieval accounts on supposed Czech oral tradition on werewolves which equated these beings with Roman fauns and lupercales. Few narratives collected in oral tradition are very similar, using tropes from contemporary literature and popular press. Typical example is supposedly authentic oldest Czech werewolf legend, published by Josef Virgil Grohmann in his Sagen-Buch von Böhmen und Mähren: Sagen aus Böhmen (1863) where we find love-struck werewolf charmed by forest fairy who also refuses to eat meat and steals snacks of the foresters instead. Most Czech and German folk legends collections of the 19th and early 20th century, however, simply do not record any werewolf legends at all. This situation changes in the mid-1900s. Werewolves, already perceived as non-Czech phenomenon, enjoyed popularity immediately after the Second World War with contemporary legends and rumours of the times based on atrocities of the Nazi Werwolf secret organization, supposedly wreaking havoc in Czech borderlands. These modern folk narratives not only strenghtened the idea of Czech werewolves as being Germanic, but also helped werewolf legends to finally enter Czech oral tradition (and popular consciousness) in greater numbers. Especially since the early 1980s, werewolf became one of the most important demonic characters of campfire legends, children´s folklore, and ghost stories. Along with generic vampires, Bloody Marys and zombies, these modern werewolves – in very similar way as their precessedors in the 19th century – owes much to contemporary popular culture. Many of them still retain their „Germanic“ label.
An Urban Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture
During the last years of the Second World War, the Nazi-occupied Czech lands were overrun by legends and rumours about a mysterious jumping phantom. Usually called "the springer" or "the spring man" (pérák or pérový muž), this urban apparition was said to be able to jump to extraordinary heights with the aid of a remarkable spring-like mechanism attached to his boots. The stories about the spring man were thought to have started in Prague, the Czech capital then suffering under a curfew and a brutal daily regime imposed by the Gestapo. The stories soon spread to other big cities, and from there to rest of the country. The spring man began to be sighted almost everywhere — leaping over the rooftops of tall buildings, over trains and trams, over ravines and river valleys. Some claimed that the spring man was secretly fighting the Nazis: he supposedly stole their equipment, damaged their weapons and sabotaged work in war industry. Instead of fearing him, people began to venerate the spring man as some kind of superhero, a Superman or Batman-like mythical figure helping Czech resistance fighters and partisans. Stories about this mysterious, bullet-proof resistance fighter, jumping over rooftops with steel springs on his feet and fighting the Nazis and their collaborators, soon spread throughout most of the Czech lands, helping real partisans and resistance fighters and lifting the spirits of the oppressed nation.
That is how the story of the spring man is usually told in contemporary Czech popular culture. The historical content and context of narratives about this phantom were, however, as this book tries to show, much more complicated. The romantic image of the spring man as a mythical anti-Nazi resistance fighter can be found in almost all kinds of pop-cultural narratives devoted to this character, from newspaper articles, animated films and literary fiction of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, to contemporary comics, novels, plays, and graffiti. But like other mythical characters later immortalised by popular fiction, the ur-spring man, the original form of this imaginary phantom, was of far more complicated — and far more humble — origin in oral tradition.
The main goal of this book is to document, analyse and interpret the phenomenon of the spring man in broader historical, geographical, social, cultural, and especially folkloric and pop-cultural context. The book aims to reconstruct the history and “cultural evolution” of this peculiar phenomenon. Contrary to the pop-cultural stereotype associating the spring man during the Second World War only with the Czech lands (or even only with Prague), this book conceptualizes this phenomenon as a “merely” regional or national version (ecotype) of a migratory international legend and of a narrative-cultural complex associated with this legend. This complex originated in Great Britain during the first decades of the 19th century, when so-called “prowling ghosts” appeared in working-class culture as a unique cultural expression of industrialized urban society. A specific amalgamation of oral narratives, ostensive cultural practices, vernacular festivities and early forms of mass culture, had been thriving in working-class communities in most British industrial centres since the end of the 18th century. Most importantly, this cultural amalgamation gave birth to the historical predecessor of the Czech spring man, a (sub)urban jumping phantom usually called Spring-heeled Jack, who was most popular between 1837 and 1877. After 1904, the narrative-cultural complex about Spring-Heeled Jack was then restructured as it became an international legend that migrated to several other European territories, most notably Russia, Germany and the Czech lands. In the present book, the main focus is on the specifically Czech version of the legend, which rechristened the British Spring-heeled Jack as the spring man. The book also discusses other, older cases of Czech prowling ghosts (which, however, lack the motif of peculiar jumping), such as the famous Phantom of Podskalí (Podskalské strašidlo) of 1874, the Phantom of Holešovice (Holešovické strašidlo) of 1876 and the Phantom of Libeň (Libeňské strašidlo) of 1907, which created ghost panics and urban scares in Prague’s working-class milieu. Detailed analysis is devoted especially to the gradual formation of the character of the spring man out of these products of working-class culture, beginning in the early 1920s, continuing through the character’s moment of greatest popularity in Czech oral culture in the 1940, 50s and 60s, and then concluding with the spring man’s slow fading into passive folklore repertoires after the early 1970s. This historical development is documented with 168 oral narratives and interviews, conducted with 85 narrators and informants. A detailed interpretation is also offered of the process of transfer of this motif from the communicative memory of oral narratives and cultural practices to the cultural memory of mass-mediated popular culture, which culminated after 2002.
Throughout, the book’s main emphasis is on the gradual simplification of this originally complicated and ambivalent folkloric being in Czech culture after World War II. The spring man was reduced not only chronologically (to a phenomenon existing only during the war) but also spatially (as a phenomenon existing only in the Czech lands or only in Prague). This historical and geographical reduction was accompanied by a strong ideologization of the character, which consisted mostly in the spring man’s anthropomorphisation, heroicisation and nationalisation. The jumping phantom came to be used by several political ideologies, such as postwar communism, Czech nationalism, social critique of the so-called “normalization” period of the 1970s and 80s, the antiglobalization movement of the early 2000s and, most recently, contemporary street anti-fascism. Since 2002, the spring man has also become popular in other discourses such as ufology, Forteana, the steampunk and dieselpunk movements and contemporary public discussion about Czech collective guilt and collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War.
The main argumentative arc of the book is provided by a comparison of two “ideal types” of spring man: the ambivalent and monstrous urban phantom of oral legends and rumours of the 20th century, and the idealized and positive mythical superhero of non-oral pop-cultural products of the 21st century. Attention is also given to “transitional” forms of these two polarizations of this character: the nostalgic and ideologised literary hero connected with children’s literature and memoirs. Differences between these two “ideal types” (phantom and superhero) are interpreted not only in terms of the content of narratives, but also genealogically, through comparison of various genres and rhetorical devices, and contextually, through analysis of changes in the aesthetic and cultural tastes of Czech audiences. Special attention is paid to the inherent nature of the different modes of collective memory involved in the dissemination of spring man narratives: communicative memory, using spoken word and shared time and space with other people (characterized by legend, rumour and personal experience narratives as main rhetorical tools used), and cultural memory, using symbolically coded texts materialized to non-oral media forms (especially popular literature, comics, film and drama). This dynamic and almost dialectical proces of interplay between communicative and cultural memory, oral and popular culture, and private and public spheres characterises the peculiar character of the spring man in his many manifestations up to the present day.
Four examples of such groups with collective tradition found in contemporary society of the Czech Republic – children, soldiers in compulsory military service, Czech tramps and musical subcultures – which can be alternativelly labelled as subcultures, folk groups or bearers of contemporary folk traditions – are presented and examined in the book.
The book is divided into thirteen chapters according to prevalent theme of the contemporary legends included. The first chapter, Murderers, Deviants and Spectres deals with horror and criminal legends, second chapter, Treacherous Aliens contains rumors about aliens and ethnic minorities, third chapter, Unexpected Ingredients deals with rumors about ethnic restaurants and fast foods. Fauna and Flora contains legends about dreadful contaminations and unfortunate pets, Sex and Erotic deals with legends about sexual affairs and embarassing situations, Alcohol and Drugs contains contemporary druglore and party stories. Injuries, Accidents and Mistakes describes popular narratives about hilarious accidents, Automobile contains legends about cars and driving, Public City Transit and Railway deals with stories localized in trams, buses and trains. Elementary School and Children Camp contains children folklore and superstitions, High School and University describes student and academic folklore, For Witnesses contains narratives connected to personalities and places of the 1980s – last years of rule of Communist regime. Last chapter, Offices and Bureaus, deals with contemporary office folklore.
Majority of Czech contemporary legends and rumors seem to have international parallels across Europe and other continents; genesis of some can be traced at least to the 1960s. One of the most popular Czech legends seems to be The Black Ambulance. This story about mysterious car kidnapping children was widespread mainly in the 1980s. Other legends and rumors popular in the Czech Republic are stories about hilarious accidents and recent bussiness folklore about supermarkets and ethnic restaurants.
"
such as „urban legends“, rumour or gossip has been always
afflicted by artifical gaps between various academical fields, most
notably between social sciences (social anthropology, sociology)
and humanities (folkloristics, literary science). Presented article
briefly sumarizes some of the most interesting main theories - but
also defficiences - of contemporary folklore studies in fields of
folkloristics, literary theory, social antropology and sociology, and
calls for multidisciplinary analysis of this phenomenon.
The authors seek to present examples of mutual interactions between the interpretations of local events and global conspiracy theories, as well as updates or later reinterpretations of older conspiracy motives. In addition to topical texts responding to the specific position of both countries between the East and the West, the paper also focuses on the events accompanying the creation of the common state of Slovaks and Czechs, the Second World War period, the rule of the Communist regime, and the events related to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the so-called Velvet Revolution in 1989. The analysis will focus on group-shared images of the enemy and the argumentation strategies used in different types of discourses.
Last but not least, the study will also bring a comparison of the Czech and Slovak contexts, as in spite of the period of the common state there are big differences in some characteristic features of the Czech and Slovak societies in some areas, which is also reflected in the “conspiracy culture”.
The article deals with critical analysis of contemporary acceptance of the intangible cultural heritage concept in field of European ethnology. European ethnology has strong historic experience with making the key analytical terms of its study (“folk”, “traditional folk culture”, “folklore”, “tradition”) problematical. In its long history, these terms were more times redefined, deconstructed or even fully abandoned. In the last years, external as well as internal criticism of this traditional ethnological terminology led to a quick acceptance of an applied and originally political term “intangible cultural heritage” that was primarily created for the UNESCO international agenda. Unlike the above mentioned traditional ethnological terms, this concept features a lot of undoubted advantages (modern understanding of culture as a process and practice, not only as a product; social construction of its meaning; taking into consideration the community´s and society´s decision about its passing down from generation to generation; international consensus about its meaning). On the other hand, however, it brings about a lot of problematical facts (derivation from an unclearly defined applied concept of “heritage”; nature of a mere enumeration of designates; weak theoretical reflexion of the concept in the contrast with its strong political and ideological background). On a ground of the concise overview Begriffgeschichte, i.e. a brief history of the European ethnology´s terminology, the essay tries to find a corresponding position for this concept and to contemplate its role for this unusual discipline that is located at the boundary line between historiography, social sciences and humanities.
narratives. This phenomenon, extensively studied by Western folklorists since the 1970s, is closely connected to a wider discourse of children and youth ghostlore, and interpreted as a girls’ ritual reflecting prepubescent menstrual anxiety, reflexion of process of ontological psychological development devoted to mastering emotion of fear of schoolchildren, or, in later adolescence, a reflexion of archetypal self-development processes in a Jungian sense.
The paper, using data documented during longitudinal field research of Czech contemporary folklore, presents the growing popularity of this expressive practice in a Czech setting in the last fifteen years, starting with the late 1990s. Comparing the Czech situation with similar cultural processes analyzed in Sweden, Spain, and especially Russia, the paper describes the diffusion of this practice by global popular culture and its glocalization to suit peculiar Czech youth ghostlore inspired by historical personages. Reflecting global, ever-shifting contemporary culture flows, especially changes in local realities of “ethnoscapes”, “mediascapes” and “ideoscapes”during the 1990s, the practice of invoking Krvavá Máří seem to be both parallel and the transformation of local practices such as schoolchildren’s
spiritism and horror stories of the 1970s and 1980s.
Key words: Czech classifications of children’s games; indexes of children’s games; children’s play; ludic activities; tabletop
games; gaming industry; folkloristics; Czech Republic.
The contribution deals with the overview of more significant literary-folkloristic studies that paid their attention to the analysis of prosaic folklore phenomena developed and/or spread during World War I both in the battlefields and in the hinterland zones.
While some texts of folklore nature drew researchers’ attention nearly immediately (prophecy, folk beliefs), the analyses of some others began several years later (demonogical legends, jokes, folk graffiti) – a part thereof came to a more thorough analysis only at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries (rumours and contemporary legends). Within European folkloristics, World War
I proves to be a period that drew researchers’ attention mainly because of an unexpected increase in “irrationality” in both rural and urban environment. At that time, this phenomenon was most often interpreted as “tradition revival” and welcomed as a mean for revitalization and legitimacy of a discipline focused on the documentation of ostensibly disappearing folk culture associated with traditional rural areas. Although this concerned quite isolated partial studies in the most cases, yet as a whole these helped increase the interest of European folkloristics in the texts circulating in the current oral tradition. The texts of that time devoted to the interpretation of World War I paved the way for the later researches into contemporary folklore to a certain extent. This research direction was made more topical again at the end of the 20th century as it served as an inspiration for the contemporary study of the World War I folklore, which was based on the exploration of more types of source materials.
Key words: folkloristics; folklore studies; history of folklore scholarship; modern folklore; contemporary legends and rumours; Central Europe; World War I.
of culture of all ethnic groups, including European immigration to the U.S.A. Presented paper examines folkloric level
of everyday culture of Texas Czechs in the first half of the 20th century. Since immigration of first Czech families to
Texas to the end of the Second World War, Texas Czechs represented vital ethnic oral culture with many specific folkloric
characteristics. Although majority of oral narratives of Texas Czechs in this period were directly transferred from the Old
Country, some of them were influenced by immigrant and pioneer experience, different social and cultural conditions in
Texas, and contacts with other Texan ethnic communities. Only the most vital European traditions, which could be adapted
to the new lifestyle, survived acculturation to specific American geographical, social and cultural setting. Presented first part
of the paper, using mainly yet unpublished 1942 thesis “Czech Folklore in Texas” by Olga Pazdral from Central Texas, tries
to point out some general outlines of Texas Czech literary folklore of this period, focusing mainly on folk legends. Planned
second and third part will outline other traditional narratives (folktales, short folklore genres like jokes and proverbs, children
folklore and personal experience narratives). Folklore of Texas Czechs of the period can be characterized not only by its
continuity with Old World traditions, but also by its incorporation of typically American folklore narratives, stemming from
unique immigration experience.
the very beginning of ethnologic research – the studies of folklore texts were in the foreground and a more remarkable
interest in artefacts of material or folk culture as a whole occurred much more later, at present the study of folklore reaches
a certain marginal position, being even part of rhetoric proclaimed by proponents of different schools in cultural and
social anthropology. The essay reflects on the causes of the above contemporary phenomenon, considering the inherent
characteristics of folkloristics, and – simultaneously – outlining the impulses to the next development thereof. The main
sense and importance of literary folkloristics, a discipline being in an apparently “schizophrenic” position on the boundary
between humanities and social sciences, is regarded not as taking-over of the period conjunctural themes, theories or
methodologies from other branches, but as emphasizing of collection and analysis of the texts widespread by word of
mouth, which should especially be in the foreground of folkloristic researches.