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Erich Fromm points to a tendency whereby the numerous freedoms gained by the citizens of modern democracies have been accompanied by widespread feelings of loneliness and disconnection. The loosening of traditional social structures leads some individuals to seek out restrictions, for example in order to counteract the feelings of being alone. This essay uses Fromm’s thesis as a lens through which to examine two of Franz Kafka’s novels in which the protagonists exemplify the “fear of freedom” proposed by Fromm. Society in these novels is perceived as a prison cell in which one must comply with social regulations, but also a fortress to which one can retreat from the chaos of the outside world, albeit at the cost of one’s psychological health.
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Kafka’s presentation of Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis is explicable using Ingarden’s ontology of the literary work of art. The common heritage of Kafka’s and Ingarden’s theoretical commitments (Franz Brentano) might explain the conceptual parallel. More importantly, an Ingardenian analysis of Gregor Samsa demonstrates that (1) Kafka is at least implicitly aware of some of the central tenets of later phenomenology and uses them to literary advantage; and (2) Ingarden’s ontology of the literary work of art works particularly well in the case of Kafka’s novel, which provides an example of some of the analysis’ more obscure aspects (in particular, Ingarden’s concept of spots of indeterminacy).
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In my paper, I discuss the Deleuzian reading of Franz Kafka. I argue that Deleuze perceives Kafka’s works through the prism of his own criticism of metaphor and that in this case one cannot dismiss the use of metaphorical language as Deleuze and Guattari attempt to do in Kafka. Toward A Minor Literature. Analyzing the narration of Kafkian animal stories, I claim that metaphors do appear in Kafka’s works but they are broken, dysfunctional metaphors: more a metaphormosis than a metaphor itself.
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I argue that Kafka’s writings express the idea that our sense of freedom is deceptive. It is deceptive because we cannot discern any proper purpose or destination that would allow us to make truly meaningful choices. Kafka’s thought here relates to the existentialist view of Kierkegaard, but it radicalizes that view by depriving it of its teleological dimension.
More...Vliv „nepředvídatelných událostí“ na vydávání Křelinovy Dcery královské
At the beginning of the 1940s, František Křelina turned his attention to historical materials. With the example of the historical novel Dcera královská (Daughter of the King), the study shows the possibilities and conditions for publishing prose for politically inconvenient writers both during the Second World War and after 1948. The study is based on previously unpublished archival materials stored in the Literature Archive of the Museum of Czech Literature and presents a new and deeper insight into publishing practice and Křelina’s work. At the same time, it corrects certain inaccuracies in the bibliography of František Křelina.
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The article provides an insight into the writings of Slovak Catholic literati published between the end of World War II and the establishment of the communist totalitarian rule in Czechoslovakia in 1948. The writing of Catholic literary critics concentrated in two religious-cultural periodicals Nová práca and Verbum. For both magazines, the article draws on their respective historical-contextual backgrounds and points to differences in their visions of cultural work. Subsequently, it characterises the way the periodicals profiled their literary criticism in reviews, glosses, commentaries and articles dealing with more general cultural topics and provides profiles of the three most significant literary critics – Aloš Stankovský (1925 – 2002), Vojtech Mihálik (1926 – 2001) and Jozef Kútnik Šmálov (1912 – 1982). The article is a contribution towards a better knowledge of the Catholic literary criticism that formed alongside the poetry of Slovak Catholic Modernists. The work of Catholic literary criticism has not been studied as much as the poetry of Catholic Modernists and this article aims at rectifying this deficiency somewhat.
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The article presents the experiences of loss, grief, and mourning endured by Josef Váchal and described by him in his book In memoriam Marie Váchalové (1923). Josef Váchal, who was one of the leading artists of the Czech art in the twentieth century, was a pioneer of printmaking in Czechia, famous for his woodcuts. He was also an interesting painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. While reading, the reader turns from the verbal description to the visual one and back again, since the book combines words and images. It contains 45 colour and 25 black-and-white woodcuts. This is a very personal and intimate confession of pain after the death of the artist’s wife, but also the record of his remorse and guilt for the romance he had in the last years of her life. However, the book also raises important metaphysical questions. Standing watch over the coffin and catafalque, Váchal photographed the dead woman for two days. The photographs became the basis for his woodcuts included in the book. The aim of this activity was not so much to commemorate his wife as to tell the story of the posthumous fate of the soul, which fascinated the artist as a mystic, interested also in the esoteric knowledge and spiritualism. The article deals with questions about the relationship between demonism and holiness, as shown and experienced by Váchal, and about his understanding of death and God.
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Novels with the intention to create a comprehensive and recapitulative “chronicle” picture of Czech society in contemporary history present one of the productive thematic tendencies in Czech fiction. Their plots are usually based on confrontations between political events and private stories. In dramatic clashes between “big” and “small” histories, sex and eroticism come to play an important role. They are also essential elements in the novel Most přes řeku zapomnění (The Bridge over the River of Oblivion) (2015) by Jaroslav Čejka. The story tracks the life of the protagonist (and that of his brother) over the course of several decades and shows how numerous love affairs and erotic escapades frame his political career. The present analytical essay focuses on the erotic motifs as realisation of the erotic mode in Čejka’s fictional picture of the “normalization” period during the communist era.
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Fanfiction – fan literature based on a popular work – is a big, largely inconsistent group of the Internet-based creative activity. A large part of this production is devoted to relationships in various forms. In addition to romantic entanglements, the authors’ attention is more or less devoted to erotic topics balancing on the edge of pornography or even openly pornographic. The contribution will be based on the Czechoslovak fanfiction written inside the fandom of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. It aims to introduce various forms of erotic and pornographic fan production, especially categories that deviate in any way from normality. Attention will also be paid to the so-called slash (gay story) that belongs to the most popular and most widespread in the fandom. It is also one of the most discourteous and undesirable, which is due, among other things, to the fact that it combines characters that are heterosexual in the original work. Another addressed topic is the communication between authors and readers. This communication is an inseparable part of fanfiction and fan community in general. The aim is not only to characterize the ways of this communication, but rather to describe its specifics within pornographic fanfiction. It focuses on the so-called ratings and warnings, but not forgetting readers’ comments, discussions with them, or attempts at censorship (from readers and webmasters), including self-censorship.
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Since the 1960s a progressive relaxation of social standards, accompanied by lowering of language standards, have been pointed out to occur in public space. Periodically, a rising vulgarity of language and society and a higher degree of tolerance to former taboos are described. The paper will attempt to show changes in the understanding of vulgar language and to analyse the inventory of vulgarisms used in contemporary Czech literary texts and their functions there. It will be based on texts Umělohmotný třípokoj by Petra Hůlová (2006), Teteliště zmrdů a Semeniště zmrdů (2012) by M. Kozelka and Eskejp: na útěku z kanceláře by J. Charvát (2017).
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The article deals with the work of the Czech essayist and prose writer Ladislav Šerý (born 1958) who, remaining under the influence of the French literary tradition, criticizes the contemporary Euro-Atlantic consumer civilization and its form as the dominating one in the Czech society after 1989. It is a shrewd and comprehensive critique of the scientific (predominantly philosophical and sociological) discourse, in which he realizes the existence of plebeian speech full of vulgarisms. A confrontation of the author’s texts that contain vulgarisms (The First Book ..., Laser Romance 1 and Laser Romance 2), with those in which they are not used (Laser Romance 3), proves that Ladislav Šerý’s vulgarisms work as a laser: they make the achievement more effective, enhance the impressiveness of the literary testimony, make it more accurate and convincing.
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The aim of this paper is to describe some of the most distinctive ways of displaying hedonism, gluttony and drunkenness in the Czech literature over the last approximately 15 years. Based on the analysis of the most significant books concerning these themes (e.g. texts by Petr Stančík, Jan Balabán, Emil Hakl, Václav Kahuda, Jáchym Topol and other authors), the author proposes a more detailed typology of the forms of these phenomena in the latest Czech literature, as well as of their specific functions in concrete texts.
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The main goal of the article is to present the existential situation of Richard Weiner, Czech author, who is a typical representative of the modern era. The author of the article refers in her findings to the late Weiner’s work Hra doopravdy. The article focuses on the problem of alienation of the individual, disintegration of personality and attempts to merge it. The text demonstrates spheres of estrangement in the relations with the Other, inter alia the otherness of sexual orientation, which leads to the destruction of the individual’s subjectivity. He refers to the ideas of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and German Ritz.
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his paper investigates the themes of walking and wandering in Paul Leppin’s novel Severins Gang in die Finsternis by analysing their occurrence and aesthetic connotation. The act of walking and the exploration of urban landscape are strongly present in the novel, which is set in Prague and is characterised by several depictions of the milieu; therefore, the text has been analysed from this angle in numerous previous studies, mainly mentioning the elements of flanerie appearing in the narration. The present study discusses the problematic aspects in defining the protagonist of the novel as flaneur, suggesting alternative interpretations that can describe the aesthetic experience of Severin’s walking more exhaustively. The analysis mainly follows Francesco Careri’s research on the aesthetics of walking, which are summarized in his work Walkscapes. Walking as Aesthetic Practice. Following the same methodological approach, the paper also analyses occurrences of the act of walking other than Severin’s walkabouts, focusing especially on the presence of processions throughout the text.
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Review of: Viera Žemberová - MIKULÁŠEK, Alexej, 2020. Poetika mravoučné povídky „pro dítky a přátele jejich“: se zřetelem k recepci německé mravoučné beletrie 19. století. Nitra: Univerzita Konštantína Filozofa. Fakulta stredoeurópskych štúdií. Ústav stredoeurópskych jazykov a kultúr. 216 s. ISBN 978-80-558-1625-8
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Abstract: The novel by Czech exile and underground author Jan Pelc is one of the most infamous novels of the 1980s. The book presents a particular model of underground subculture and focuses on a group of youths who do not fit to mass society or totalitarianism. Decadent, overthrown and fully removed from social conventions, these youths live according to their own rules. They live in permanent danger to their lives. This is where the main question comes in: is this the common Czech underground, or is this literary image just a possibility? This novel evokes ambivalent comments.
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Abstract: Who is Jaroslav Rudiš and where does he fit in modern Czech literature? We use the term „ideology of the present“ to examine the bonds between literature, new media, pop and celebrity culture and the new generation of authors. What is the role of the modern writer and is he or she just a product that wants fast fame just like a movie star? We will look closely into three remarkable novels of the Czech writer in order to describe and position his work in the contemporary literary scene of Czechia based on the „ideology of the present“.
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