A JOURNEY OF A NAME FROM THE REALM OF REFERENCE TO THE REALM OF MEANING: THE RECEPTION OF MILAN KUNDERA WITHIN THE CZECH CULTURAL CONTEXT (original) (raw)
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The Influence of the Prague School on Milan Kundera’s Essays
This paper analyses the influence of the Prague School literary theory on Milan Kundera’s Essays on the European novel. Along with the literary thoughts introduced by the author in his novels, Kundera has published his reflections on the novel as a genre and, specifically, on the Central European novel in his essays L’art du roman (1986), Les testaments trahis (1997) and Le rideau (2005). Although he has labelled his literary essays as “a practitioner's confession”, his books contain many references to key debates regarding aesthetics, novel theory and literary theory that enable a further analysis of the theoretical discourses that influenced his idea of the novel. The purpose of this study is to describe the different forms and levels of influence of the Prague Linguistic Circle in these essays and to understand the role of Czech Structuralism in Kundera’s reflections on the art of the novel. This analysis will examine first the few direct quotations and references to the work of members of the Prague School and its circle of influence (for example, Jan Mukařovský and Viktor Shklovsky) and later with the use of specific critical concepts developed by the Czech Structuralism such as “Composition”, “Structure”, “Theme”, “Motif” and “Value”. After tackling the direct links, the study will set forth the indirect influence of the Prague School on Kundera’s procedure to analyse the works of European novelists such as Hermann Broch, Robert Musil and Franz Kafka, as well as his own novels. Further ties between the Czech Structuralism and Kundera can be seen in his conception of literary history (that can be linked to the ideas developed by Felix Vodička and Jan Mukařovský) and in relevant common referents in the aesthetic field such as the Husserlian phenomenology and Hegelian aesthetics. Understanding the impact of Czech Structuralism in Kundera’s work will offer a broader comprehension of the origins of his conception of the novel, but it will also show the dialogue between literary theory and the poetics of a contemporary author.
Czytanie Literatury. Łódzkie Studia Literaturoznawcze
The interview with Marek Bieńczyk covers, in general, the subject of the philosophy of novel by Milan Kundera and the reception of his works nowadays in Poland and abroad. Marek Bieńczyk – the French translator of Milan Kundera’s novels – talks about the history of his first translations and the beginnings of scientific thinking about Kundera. Moreover, he explains the problems connected with Kundera’s authorial and elaborate philosophy of novel: the conception of narrator, hero and composition. Bieńczyk also narrates his own memories with M. Kundera. What is more, he indicates the inspirations he draws in his own work from innovative prose by Czech novelist, who is celebrating his 91st anniversary this year.
(De)Presenting the self| Milan Kundera's deconstruction of the public persona through paradox
1997
Permission is granted by the author to reproduce dûs material in its entirety, provided that this material is used for scholarly purposes and is properly cited in published works and reports. ** Please check "Yes" or "No" and provide signature * * Yes, I grant permission _l No, I do not grant permission ' Kundera's works will be referred to in parenthetical citations by the following abbreviations: Risibles amours. RA: La plaisanterie. LP: Le livre du rire et de l'oubli. LRO\ La vie est ailleurs. VEA, La valse aux adieux. VAA\ L'insoutenable légèreté de Fèüs, AEE, L'immortalité. 7M: L'art du roman. AR. Les testaments trahis. TT\ La lenteur. LL\ Jacques et son maître. JM.
Jakub Češka: The Fundamentals of Milan Kunderas Poetics, Renyxa, No.12, 2022. pp.222-250.(1)
Renyxa, 2022
The study is devoted to the early fundamental starting points of Milan Kundera’s work from the 1950s to the 1960s. According to the later authorial stylisation, the novelist is born from the ruins of his lyrical world. This assertion creates an impression of a direct, linear authorial development, in which somewhere at the beginning is Kundera’s poetry, which the author later abandons in favour of the novel upon reaching an age of artistic maturity. However, if we follow the actual course of Kundera’s poetics, we find that this conception does not correspond with the dynamics of the author’s development. This it not only because in the creative phase in which the author wrote poetry, he also wrote his first prose texts, but also because his work as a novelist is dependent upon lyrical devices (metaphors, the evocation of inner experiences etc.). For this reason, in this study I shall focus on defining three creative principles – lyrical, dramatic and novel writing. These poetic principles are not exclusively bound to the corresponding genres. The resulting form of the literary work is determined by their mutual relationship, proportions and configuration (whether this concerns poetry, drama or the novel).
Milan Kundera, the Prague Spring and the Exile Organizations
Milan Kundera, the Prague Spring and the Exile Organizations, 2020
This work will attempt to answer to two main research questions; The first is about the size of the influence that Kundera had on the development of the Prague Spring Movement in 1968 through his literary work as well as his interventions with speeches and actions. The second one, and most difficult to answer surely, is whether potential links of Kundera to exile organizations, such as the Assembly of Captive European Nations, Radio Free Europe and Council of Free Czechoslovakia, and its prominent members, like Petr Zenkl or Pavel Tigrid, exist. There will also be an in-between part to cover an ambiguous accusation by the historian Adam Hradilek of Kundera having performed the act of denunciation of a western agent to the communist police back in the 1950s to shed light on the communist past of the author and strengthen or weaken several points of this research.
Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts: Studies in Language and Literature
Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts: Studies in Language and Literature, 2016
Franz Kafka is by far the Prague author most widely read and admired internationally. However, his reception in Czechoslovakia, launched by the Liblice conference in 1963, has been conflicted. While rescuing Kafka from years of censorship and neglect, Czech critics of the 1960s “overwrote” his German and Jewish literary and cultural contexts in order to focus on his Czech cultural connections. Seeking to rediscover Kafka’s multiple backgrounds, in Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts Marek Nekula focuses on Kafka’s Jewish social and literary networks in Prague, his German and Czech bilingualism, and his knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. Kafka’s bilingualism is discussed in the context of contemporary essentialist views of a writer’s “organic” language and identity. Nekula also pays particular attention to Kafka’s education, examining his studies of Czech language and literature as well as its role in his intellectual life. The book concludes by asking how Kafka “read” his urban environment, looking at the readings of Prague encoded in his fictional and non-fictional texts.