Cornova (Mar 2022)
Ignác Cornova a jeho biografie Bohuslava Hasištejnského z Lobkovic
Abstract
Ignaz Cornova and his biography of Bohuslav of Lobkowicz and Hassenstein. The varied and contradictory perception of the personality and work of Bohuslav of Lobkowicz and Hassenstein in the early modern period was symbolically crowned in the Enlightenment by Ignaz Cornova’s biography, which is still the most comprehensive work dedicated to Hassenstein. After a brief recapitulation of research and the state of knowledge before Cornova, the study examines his approach to the material and the main substantive and formal features of his biography. Older Latin literature dealing with humanism plays an important role, as do contemporary models from the European literatures of the Enlightenment. Cornova’s work partly follows the traditional chronological approach, but several timeless chapters emerge from it, driven both by an interest in Bohuslav as an individual and by a desire to make a purposeful pedagogical impact on the reader. His aim was to present a rounded and engaging picture of Hassenstein’s life and literary output, based on his surviving works, especially his poems and correspondence, tastefully and without distracting remarks and comments. Ludwig Schubart, for example, with his biography of the German humanist Ulrich von Hutten, could have been a model for him in this respect. Brief mention is also made of the critical reviews of Cornova’s work, which he himself deals with in the preface to Hassenstein’s biography. A separate section is devoted to a comparison of the selection of poems translated by Cornova and his contemporaries Thám, Vinařický and Budík. Although the biography was considered Cornova’s most important work in his lifetime, was cited and received positive feedback, it is not very useful for contemporary research, unlike the works of Josef Truhlář, who was a few decades younger. From a scholarly point of view it falls short of contemporary demands and as a literary work is even more outdated, although (or perhaps because) it reflected the literary trends of the time.
Keywords
