'Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts': Byzantium in Czech Historical Fiction

KULHÁNKOVÁ, Markéta. 'Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts': Byzantium in Czech Historical Fiction. In M. Kulhánková - P. Marciniak. Byzantium in the Popular Imagination. The Modern Reception of the Byzantine Empire. London: I.B. Tauris, Bloombsbury Publishing, 2023, p. 193-206, 19 pp. ISBN 978-0-7556-0728-0.

Basic information

• Original name: 'Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts': Byzantium in Czech Historical Fiction
• Authors: KULHÁNKOVÁ, Markéta.
• Edition: London, Byzantium in the Popular Imagination. The Modern Reception of the Byzantine Empire, p. 193-206, 19 pp. 2023.
• Publisher: I.B. Tauris, Bloombsbury Publishing

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Chapter(s) of a specialized book
• Field of Study: 60206 Specific literatures
• Country of publisher: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• Publication form: printed version "print"
• WWW: URL
• ISBN: 978-0-7556-0728-0
• Keywords in English: Byzantium; Czech historical fiction; Karel Čapek, Radovan Šimáček; Jan Cimický; František Kalenda; reception studies
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Presence of Byzantium in modern Czech literature is as rare as were the contacts between the Czech lands and Byzantium in the Middle Ages. Saints Cyril and Methodius are perhaps the only Byzantines who, for obvious reasons, acted repeatedly as inspiration for the Czech (and Slovak) literature and became widely known outside of the narrow scholarly circles. However, there can be found some noteworthy cases of the use of Byzantine history in Czech literature. The focus of this chapter are three such examples written in different periods of modern Czech literature. The first one is a short story from the collection entitled Apocryphal Tales (first published in 1936) by Karel Čapek, the leading Czech novelist of the interwar period, which renders a fictional dialogue. This dialogue takes place (most probably) at the beginning of the 8th century between a layman art lover and an abbot, a former icon painter, and its topic is the cult of icons. My second example will be a YA novel (published in 1980) set during the time of the fourth crusade. The third example is the fictional biography of Ioannes Tzimiskes written by Jan Cimický. The last and the final example are twoo books by František Kalenda, a historical crime story set in the 14th century Peloponnese, and a mysterious novel about a travel of a a 12-year-old orphan boy from the Middle Europe to Constantinople. By using these examples I demonstrate different approaches to (Byzantine) history in Czech literature of 20th and 21st cent.