Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Charles University

The Institute of Czech and Comparative Literature and Literary Theory conducts systematic research into the history of Czech literature, theory of literature and culture, related applied disciplines, and general as well as comparative literature. The academic interests of our staff and regular partners cover all key stages of the history of Czech literature from its early days until present. Research methods draw on the legacy of the Prague School of Structuralism, reaching out, however, to embrace expertise from other fields such as semiotics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, reception aesthetics, new historicism, gender studies and cultural studies. The Institute prefers to implement a variety and polyphony of approaches, rather than adhering to one single dominant methodology. Principal research topics, pursued by most members of our Institute either as independent researchers or in team work, revolve around 19th century literature and culture, literature and culture at the fin de siècle, artistic avant-garde, the Holocaust from the perspective of literary and cultural studies, pop-culture, and theoretical aspects of the poetics of literature, narratology, and theoretical aspects of the contact between philosophy and literary thought.