Svět pod napětím

The end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century appear to have been a turning point in many ways as well as a key period for understanding the subsequent literary evolution. Areas in which tensions caused by historical processes became strongly evident were, for instance, the life styles and attitudes of the aristocracy, the intellectual atmosphere, the status of women in the society and the emergence of ego-documentary genres. With reference to the above-mentioned topics, this essay deals with two editions of ego-documentary texts written by two young noblewomen who spent their youth during the period of sentimentalism and romanticism. This essay demonstrates how strong the preserving role of states and cultural traditions was and to what extent individual – and in some passages even literary – features of the authors can be considered. (This literariness may also be caused by the fact that ego-documentaries have gradually become a valid part of literary context as well as by the fact that through ego-documentaries even traditional prose genres have been modified.)