Propriální krajina postmodernismu – na příkladu próz Michala Ajvaze a Miloše Urbana
The proprial landscape of postmodernism – a case study of the prose of Michal Ajvaz and Miloš Urban

Summary/Abstract: The study focuses on the analysis of proper names in short stories and novels by two Czech authors, Michal Ajvaz (*1949) and Miloš Urban (*1967), in the context of their classification within the postmodern literary movement. In a corpus comprising six prose works by Michal Ajvaz and seven by Miloš Urban, proper names are analysed using quantitative linguistic methods, namely keyword analysis – which makes it possible to assess the extent to which the authors focus on proper names (and on specific types of them) –, and through collocational analysis of selected proper names. The quantitative methods are complemented by qualitative interpretation based on knowledge of the literary-historical characteristics of the analysed texts. The paper focuses both on identifying the characteristics of the proprial layer in each author’s work and on their mutual comparison. The aim of the paper is not only to describe the proprial vocabulary of the authors, but also to contribute to a more general literary-historical characterisation of their style, for example in terms of narrative space, characters, or narrative technique. The analysis of names showed that anthroponyms dominate in the works of both authors; Ajvaz works with both exotic and common names (with a dominance of exotic ones), while Urban uses intertextual and speaking names. In terms of the use of proper names, the style of both authors shows variability; especially in Ajvaz’s case, an increasing influence of proper names is evident. Collocational analysis revealed the functioning of names in narration (the structure of embedded narratives in Ajvaz’s case and the foregrounding of space in Urban’s), and appears productive in examining name variation, while the linguistic analysis of speaking names yielded only limited results.

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