A discourse of anti-revolutionary Czech written prints in the period of the French revolution: an example of narrative texts
Abstract
The second chapter of a monograph The French trick of liberty deals with texts of V. M.
Kramerius and Jan Rulík, which had at the end of the 18th century a task to form the opinion of Czech speaking population about the events in France, and reflects a way by which it was being done. With the aid of a critical analytical methodology of Norman Fairclough, the author described at first a discourse of anti-revolutionary prints and then he paid attention to textual representation of concrete revolutionary events, such as the executions of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
In this context, he drew also a comparison, among others, between two discourses of identical type – those of Czech and French prints. The point is to find out the strategies of anti-revolutionary texts, accentuate what kind of ideas about the French Revolution were diffused among Czech population, and enrich in this way the wide discussion about the understanding of relation between the governmental power, or rather the Czech revivalists, and the Czech (mainly rustic) population.