Spring Man

This book traces the creation and circulation of the heroic myth of Spring Man, legendary Czech phantom of the Second World War often described as a superhero who fights against the Nazis, through national and international popular culture from the late 19th through the late 20th century

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Spring Man: A Belief Legend between Folklore and Popular Culture deconstructs the nationalistic myth of Spring Man that was created after the Second World War in visual culture and literature and presents his original form as an ambiguous ghostly denizen of oral culture. Petr Janeček analyzes the archetypal character, social context, and cultural significance of this fascinating phenomenon with help of dozens of accounts provided by period eyewitnesses, oral narratives, and other sources. At the same time, the author illustrates the international origin of the tales in the originally British migratory legend of Spring-heeled Jack that reaches back to the second third of the 19th century and draws parallels between the Czech myth of spring man and similar urban phantom narratives popular in the 1910s Russia, 1940s U.S. and Slovakia, 1950s Germany, as well as other parts of the world.