Jak číst Vančuru? K proměnám obrazu autora ve světle (i stínech) jeho recepce (1923–1945)
How to Read Vančura? Transformations of the Author’s Image in the Light (and Shadow) of His Reception (1923–1945)

Summary/Abstract: This study aims to better understand the authorial figure of Vladislav Vančura by reconstructing the critical and literary-historical image conveyed to us by the reception of the writer during his lifetime, starting with the writer’s first short story collections and finishing with his Obrazy z dějin národa českého (‘Images from the history of the Czech nation’). Loosely following on the theoretical bases of previous discussions, which in various ways conceptualize the effect of the ‘name of the author’ in relation to his work (Foucault, Bourdieu, Russian formalism, Mukařovský), this study examines Vančura’s literary output through the lens of its author (as a constructed figure and category), especially in terms of the author function as it serves to form this output into a unified whole. It deals with changes in the name of the author mainly in relation to Vančura’s reception. During the interwar period the critical reception captured the creative phenomenon of the writer in the course of his development, at a moment when his extreme style and language caused numerous controversies which grew into open polemics. While these revolved primarily around the issue of aesthetics (in the case of Pole orná a válečná and Poslední soud), they involved broader worldview and ideological issues (as with the novel Tři řeky). Vančura’s persistent search for a narrative form repeatedly compelled critics and interpreters of his time to reassess the criteria and critical standards for literature. This study traces the transformations of the author’s image in this context all through his life as it assumed countless ‘faces’, subverting the traditional assumption of coherence in Vančura’s literary output that the concept of the author was meant to guarantee, and thus demonstrating — given the failure of this concept to bring about such coherence — how it is necessary to look instead for those places of incoherence, contradiction, and disparity. To this end, the study does not seek to cover the history of Vančura’s reception in all its facets but to trace those significant moments when the image of the author and his work was transformed, challenging unequivocal interpretations and defying the interpretative stereotypes and schemes into which it has so often been confined.

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