I'll probably find I have a lot of random notes on Prague to transcribe soon. A lot are on a kooky idea for a novel, and I may have said enough already about novels I haven't actually gotten to writing. Meanwhile:
I'm enjoying The Coasts of Bohemia by Derek Sayer, not only because he gives a lot of detail on Czech history, but also because I like his ideas about identity, language, and nationhood (they're not congruent, basically). And he says this in the introduction:

From the vantage point of London, or Paris, or New York--or, not so very long ago, Moscow--it is possible to identify history with progress, to ascribe to it providence, directionality, and meaning. It is possible to write modernity in the singular, and to prattle about "the end of history." Such fables are believable precisely so long as the Bohemias of this world are forgotten. Their dislocation is the condition of our coherence. Viewed from Bohemia itself, the modern condition looks somewhat different. It is a chiaroscuro of beauties and terrors, whose colors are invariable more vibrant, and whose depths are much darker, than our anemic narratives of progress are apt to acknowledge. Modernity was never either singular or simple. It was always a "postmodern" polyphony, in which fragile stabilities of location and identity rested on the uncertain vicissitudes of power.

That's very well said, though there's more. And much more significant when you consider it isn't just true of "modernity," but of all cultures and histories: not only do periodic accounts always exclude indigenous peoples, who continue on in the same actual present as the academics and ideologues who consign them to "the past," but for every age, the view of cultural historians remains narrowly focused on the most prestigious voices and views. Who knows what else might have been going on during "the age of Athenian greatness"?
Aside from (kind of) clearing up what all those defenestrations were about, Sayer provides lots of seductive details--as with the Renaissance mural discovered during a renovation project of 1919, depicting
a Talmudic legend in which the youngest of three sons, by refusing to join his brothers in an archery competition in which his father's exhumed corpse is the target, gains the inheritance.
It seems to me that has Lear beat all to hell.

Shakespeare in Prague II

Rudolf II was also deposed by his brother in 1611 after a reign notable not only for his shift in attitude toward the Jews and his personal interest in Rabbi Loew, but his absorption in religion, mysticism, and alchemy. He is the person who brought the British magicians John Dee and Edward Kelly to Prague. Shakespeare probably wrote The Tempest in 1611; the scenario involves a similar situation and is the only plot of Shakespeare's not traceable to an obvious source. This parallel is probably well-known to scholars of the play but I'm not sure I've ever come across it; at least it hasn't registered till now. What interests me especially is combining this with the theory that Shakespeare received his background on Jews from Jewish Italian Musicians (as in Shakespeare and the Jews). The stuff I've been reading says that the connection of Rabbi Loew with the Golem is a 19th-century invention, a piece of spurious folklore like so much else--although that's an interesting topic in itself, as with Irish, Scottish, and other folklore of the uncanny that turns out to be inventions of modern nationalist revivals.
If I were to do The Dybbuk in a course on the Uncanny, that could be a focusing topic--the functional equivalent of trick photography, say, in artfully manipulating the audience's response so that they feel a connection to the speciously authentic, numinous, or archetypal. It's relevant to The DaVinci Code and contemporary Christian movements like Pentecostalism, too, that use contemporary media to pretend to present something both ancient and "spiritual." This is worthn considering more as a serious topic for the course.
By the way, here's a quote from Stewart Klawans I filed away years ago:
An archetype is merely a cliche as seen by someone who lacks a sense of humor.
That's from his review of The Doors, appropriately enough.

Shakespeare in Prague

The last part of Rudolf II's reign and Rabbi Loew's tenure in Prague coincide with the period in which Shakespeare wrote Macbeth and Hamlet which makes it interesting to think about how the Golem legend would come across in a play like Marlowe's Dr. Faustus--or for that matter, The Merchant of Venice. I always want to see what the flip side looks like in some moral situation that there's been universal agreement about--which is why I've always been interested in retelling the story of Salem with the witches real and malevolent.

This week there's been some passing back and forth of the first chapter of the dream education book for the final (maybe) version of the proposal, and it makes me feel like once I get my notes together, my section should not frighten me too much. After that is drafted, I can track down informants and work in the stuff that comes from interviews. During April, I should spend some time in the Library of Congress researching Winsor McCay for the talk I give at Sonoma in July, which is intended to be an early chapter of the book on dreams and movies.