Die unbekannte Moderne in der Provinz: Die deutsch-tschechische Grenzregion im modernistischen Roman Zapadlí vlastenci 1932
The Unknown Modernity in the Province: The German‑Czech Border Region in the Modernist Novel Zapadlí vlastenci 1932

Summary/Abstract: In his novel Zapadlí vlastenci 1932, Josef Kocourek (1909–1933) creates an atmospheric portrait of the German-Czech border region in the early 1930s and focuses on the conflict between the two nations that would later culminate in the ‘Sudetenkrise’. While Marxist literary criticism interpreted the text as a ‘proletarian novel’ due to its ideological determination, this paper demonstrates that Kocourek’s literary work is an intricate intertextual fabric that ironizes literary foils, transcends genre boundaries and permits a variety of different readings. The peculiarities of this novel consist in its avant -garde techniques (montage and collage), its multiply coded language oscillating between different stylistic registers and in its original graphic design, placing it firmly within Czech modern literature despite the provincial context in which it was written.

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