Karel Capek

The full text is now available here:
http://www.ucl.cas.cz/edicee/dejiny/39-v-obecnem-zajmu-cenzura-a-socialni-regulace-literatury-v-moderni-ceske-kulture-1749-2014

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In the 2015 "book of the year" - survey of the Czech daily Lidové noviny, our book was awarded the 3rd place, just behind the Czech translations of Second-hand Time by nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich and Michel Houellebecq's Submission.  - - - - -
 
This book describes, analyses and interprets the role played by censorship and by other institutional and structural mechanisms that have participated in the social regulation of literary communication within the cultural sphere of the historical Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia), which loosely coincide with the borders of the modern Czech Republic. The exposition on the period up to 1918 examines the organization of the supervising censorship bodies in the Habsburg Empire, which included the Czech lands, particularly the activities of the Viennese authorities relating to literary communication within the Czech lands in Czech, German and other languages. Apart from some individual comparative references, however, this book does not focus on conditions in Slovakia, even though it joined the Czech lands to form a single unitary and then federative state in 1918−1939 and 1945−1992, for ever since the time of the Habsburg Empire, Slovakia as a part of Hungary has had its own specific printing rights traditions. Even in the 20th century, however, as part of a common state, in spite of its linguistic, cultural and political similarities it formed its own administrative and cultural unit to such an extent that no exposition of the social regulation of literature and the press in the Czech lands can be superimposed on the Slovak situation in that period. This book provides the reader with a comprehensive view of the changing faces of censorship and of the regulation of literature as well as the press (with some exceptions, performing arts genres are outside of its purview). The historical period under review is defined on the one end by the beginning of the Enlightenment, during which the focus of institutionalized censorship shifted from the church to the state, and on the other end by the most recent turn of the century, which saw changes in media usage as the internet grew in importance. The internal chronological milestones, dividing the book’s exposition into eight sections (1749−1810, 1810−1848, 1848−1863, 1863−1918, 1918−1938, 1938−1949, 1949−1989 and 1989−2014), reflect important changes in censorship practice.
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Dějiny české literatury již od 18. století provázejí stížnosti literátů na to, jak je jejich tvorba omezová na cenzurou. Přesto vědecká práce, která tento jev zevrubně popisuje, vychází až nyní. Kniha V  obecném zájmu zkoumá proměny cenzury literatury a tisku od nástupu osvícenství až do počátku 21. století a masového rozšíření internetu.
Výklad je chronologicky rozdělen do osmi částí. Na úvod každé z nich je zařazena rámcová kapitola, jež podává obecný přehled o podobě, zaměření a proměnách cenzury daného období. Soustředí se přitom na instituce, které dohled vykonávají, i na dopady této regulace na fungování dobového literárního provozu. Za každou rámcovou kapitolou následuje blok případových studií, sledujících na vybraných tématech působení literární cenzury v detailu.
Autorský tým, který v roce 2012 připravil k vydání překladovou antologii teoretických textů Nebezpečná literatura?, při práci na knize vstřebal diskuse o  povaze cenzury, jež v  humanitních vědách probíhají od šedesátých let 20. století. Předkládaná kniha proto nechápe cenzuru a  regulaci literatury pouze jako soubor zákazů brzdících všeobecný pokrok, naopak se ji snaží popsat jako komplexní jev zakotvený ve struktuře moderní kultury, jenž literární tvorbu i její recepci nejen omezuje, ale i povzbuzuje, provokuje a obohacuje...

This article deals with the one of the oldest and most traditional fields in quantitative linguistics, the concept of vocabulary richness. Although there are several methods for vocabulary richness measurement, all of them are influenced by text size. Therefore, the authors propose a new way of vocabulary richness measurement without any text length dependence. In the second part of the article, the new method is used for a genre analysis in texts written by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. Furthermore, differences between authors and between languages are studied with this method.