One's own version of history : the story of history of the Charles university and its development in the course of the twentieth century
Abstract
This study deals with the issue of constructing a distinctly 'national' narrative of the history of the Charles University during the 'short' twentieth century (1918-1998). The author assumes that popular representations of the past of the university had been strongly influenced by the Czech national narrative whose roots stretch all the way back to the first half of the nineteenth century.
In order to reconstruct the various versions of this narrative, the author analyses not only the various verbal and visual representations of the past of the university, but also the changes its story had undergone in the course of the twentieth century. Based on an investigation of narrative compressions and stereotypes on the one hand and the development of the narrative in the works of particular historians and their impact on the shape and form of the narrative on the other, the study aims at identifying the basic unifying features of the history of the university during the abovementioned period.