Note: This episode originally aired in February 2024. Matt and Cameron are taking a much needed break this August and wanted to re-up some mid-series Life and Fate episodes they thought deserved more attention.

Pick up a copy of The Czech Manuscripts here.

Show Notes:

This week, Matt and Cameron are joined by Professor David L. Cooper to talk about his new book The Czech Manuscripts: Forgery, Translation, and National Myth. In the book, Dr. Cooper takes a new look at the so-called Czech Manuscripts — several forged literary works that played a large role in 19th Century Czech national identity-building — using several approaches to tackle what trends shaped them and how they were treated in turn. 

David L. Cooper is Associate Professor and Head of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A specialist in Czech and Russian literatures, his research is in the areas of nationalism in literature, forgery and mystification, translation history and translation studies, and history of criticism. David has published translations of Slovak folktales and a critical edition of the poems of the Czech 19th-century forged manuscripts, The Queen’s Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts with Other Forgeries of the Czech Revival (Ann Arbor, 2018).

Major themes: National identity, forgery or fiction, more medieval poetry

The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. 

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