Five Ways of Investigating Adnominals in Czech Sonnets of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Abstract The paper focuses on analysing the use of adnominals in the selected fifteen sonnet authors of the 19th- and 20th-century Czech literature. The poets have been selected so as to represent the main literary schools of the period, the main criterion of their ranking being their dates of birth. The investigation treats both general trends (changing numbers of adnominals in various eras, the measure of ornamentality in particular authors), and specific, Czech-based issues (premodification and postmodification, attributes and genitives). The goal of the paper is threefold: first, there is an endeavour to determine some principles of the development of the sonnet tradition in the Czech literature; second, some micro-analyses of the poets are provided, including contrastive views of various writing tactics employed by them; and third, one way of measuring ornamentality has been sketched, as the tool may be of help in unearthing stylistic preferences of different authors. All counts and figures are accompanied with interpretations which may be further enriched by literary scholars.