Pojetí historie v českých povídkových cyklech
Understanding history in Czech short story cycles

Summary/Abstract: The present essay consists of two parts. In the first one, the main features of the short story cycle are discussed, because it is not common in the Czech literary context to think of it as a specific genre. This characteristics is based mostly on the ideas of F. L. Ingram (1971) and M. Dunn with A. Morris (1995), because their terminology seems to be extremely inspirative for Czech literary criticism. In the second part of the essay, two samples of Czech short story cycles are analyzed in detail. Both of them were created in exile and their autors were not dependend on Boccaccio’s Decameron. Karel Michal’s Rodný kraj is seen as a traditional sample of „arranged cycle“ (Ingram), but Jan Novák’s Striptease Chicago is understood as the „composite novel“ (Dunn; Morris) . The vision of Czech history in short story cycles differs from traditional Czech historical novels based on patriotism and using classical narrative techniques. The element of historical absurdity is much more stressed in the cycles, and in Czech samples of the given genre there seems to be more place for playfulness and bitter irony. The most important principles in the analyzed short story cycles are not linearity, causality and the idea of development (as in realistic novel), but parallelism of events, repetition of almost identical situations and their unceasing variations.

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