Literature Freedom? Valuing Freedom in the Debate on Engaged Literature in the Czech Republic at the Beginning of the Second Decade of the 20th Century

Abstract

Participants of a debate concerning engagement in literature (particularly in poetry) that went though in some Czech cultural and literary magazines in 2012–2013 often used the category of freedom. Using this debate as an example this article follows a pattern in a public, also intellectual, discourse, in which the notion of freedom serves for defense of individualistic positions against a supposed peril of community values perceived as subjugation of an author as an individual artist. In the search of a potential remedy for the polarization of notions the article shifts towards the role of a recipient in the process of reading.