The Grand hoax: Nothing here is true, everything actually happened Cover Image
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The Grand hoax: Nothing here is true, everything actually happened

Author(s): Małgorzata Balcerzak
Subject(s): Politics / Political Sciences, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy
Published by: Stowarzyszenie Czasu Kultury
Keywords: conspiracy theories;hoax;fraud;national revival;czech republic;

Summary/Abstract: The article attempts to analyze the ways in which conspiracy theory has been used as a tool in literary fiction, as seen through such categories as hoax, “ontological scandal” and surfiction. Serving as material for critical analysis is M. Urban’s novel Poslední tečka za Rukopisy, describing the forgery of manuscripts discovered in the nineteenth century by V. Hanka and J. Linda. The documents, originally considered historical literary artefacts, over time became the subject of a battle for the “to be or not to be” of Czech national literature. Urban’s novel, using the strategy of meta-mystification, juggles the conventions of fact-based literature. It presents the history of literature in the form of a paranoid conspiracy theory, subversively treating it as an example of the strategy of appropriating discourse.

  • Issue Year: XXXII/2016
  • Issue No: 02
  • Page Range: 98-104
  • Page Count: 7
  • Language: Polish