Abstract
The paper makes wider comparisons between 14th-century Czech and French literary texts to show a shared, if slightly nuanced, ideology of man's interaction with the forest. It argues that the large number of foundation narratives which 14th-century literature produced, reflect a sociocultural experience of the preceding medieval colonization effort whose impact had, by the onset of the 14th century, become evident.
The experience is, in this type of narrative, transformed into positive, teleological ideology of justified exploitation of natural exploitation resulting in socioeconomic growth and wellbeing; the topos of uncultivated nature, designed as uninhabitable, even dangerous wilderness serves as a springboard for the ideological point. Cases in point are the Middle French romances Méliador, Mélusine and Perceforest and the Dalimil Chronicle and the Saint Procopius legends in Old Czech.