Pojem secese v české literární vědě

The presented study deals with the concept of Art Nouveau in Czech literary studies. In the first part, we try to outline the meaning that literary critics assigned to the term Art Nouveau at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, when this term first began to appear in the Czech language environment. In the second part, we introduce the basic approaches to the term Art Nouveau, which numerous literary historians have applied in their works in many variations over the years. The aim of the paper is to point out the ambiguity of the term Art Nouveau, the core of which lies in the insufficient distinction between the original meaning of the term(from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries) and the later meanings that literary historians began to ascribe to it. The aim of the thesis is also to infer criteria from the presented analyses and interpretations, the observance of which would lead to a clearer usage of the term Art Nouveau and, consequently, to its introduction as a justified literary-historical category