The article deals with the concept of titanism in Václav Černý’s book Essai sur le titanisme dans la poésie romantique occidentale entre 1815 et 1850 from 1935. It analyses Černý’s understanding of titanism in the framework of his historical approach to European thought. It points to Šalda’s criticism of the ‘ideographic’ nature of Černý’s approach, and uses this criticism to provide a more formal grasp of titanism as a literary topos characterized by a specific sequence of five components: an apostrophe of a god, a statement of his weakness, a description of harm, a titanic gesture, and a promise of action. It argues that it is the specific constellation of these components, which is the source of the pathos experienced by the examined poems, rather than the Protestant content seen by Černý. The article concludes by pointing out the specific historic and political context of Černý’s writing, which encouraged him to enhance the protestant dimensions of the problem as well as the ideological de pendency on the writing of T. Garrigue Masaryk.