Univ. prof. dr. Karel Štěpaník, DrSc. (1903–1970) was the Head of the Department for twenty years, beginning in 1951, but he had held the position of an associate professor since 1945. He received his DrSc. degree in 1958, and was appointed Professor of English and American Literature in 1960. In his research, he focused mainly on English Romanticism.

Prof. Štěpaník was a native of Přerov. After graduating from the Kyjov high school, he studied English and Czech at our Department in 1922–1926 as a student of Prof. Chudoba. He wrote monographs on William Hazlitt and Keats; he did not manage to complete his intended second book on Keats. In addition to the monographs, Štěpaník published studies in scholarly journals, a list of which was published in the ČMF (see link below). Štěpaník was the author of several textbooks and a translator of scholarly texts into Czech, and he also translated fiction – Rosa Macaulay, Rudyard Kipling, and Stephen Spender.

Articles about Karel Štěpaník

• Kocmanová, Jessie: “Professor Karel Štěpaník, PhD., Dr.Sc. is Sixty-Five Years Old”. Philologica Pragensia roč. 11/1968. Praha: Academia 1968. S. 176–177. Online in the Digital Library of the Academy of Science (limited access);
• Tichý, Aleš: Za Karlem Štěpaníkem. Sborník prací Filozofické fakulty brněnské univerzity. D, Řada literárněvědná. [1970]-1971, roč. 19-20, č. D17-18, s. [274]-276.

Štěpaník’s Works

Štěpaník, Karel: William Hazlitt jako literární kritik. [William Hazlitt as literary critic] Brno: Filosofická fakulta M.U. s podporou Ministerstva školství a osvěty, 1947, s. [209]
Štěpaník, Karel: Básnické dílo Johna Keatse. [Poetic works of John Keats] Vyd. 1. Praha: Státní pedagogické nakladatelství, 1958, s. [5]-[6]
Pantůčková, Lidmila: Soupis prací univ. prof. dr. Karla Štěpaníka, DrSc., [Bibliography of Štěpaník’s works] Časopis pro moderní filologii, roč. 50, Praha: Klub moderních filologů 1968, s. 164–166.

Translations:
Kipling, Rudyard: Kniha slov (A Book of Words). Praha: Máj 1937. (Kipling’s selected speeches from 1906–1928. Published in the series Nobel Laureates.)