Kulturní konstruování Krále Šumavy
Cultural constructions of the King of Šumava

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses on literary and film representations of the “King of Šumava” and associated narratives (state border guards and people-smugglers), examining the links between individual works and their period context and media. Attention is also focused on the intertextual “communications” interconnecting works and the relations between the individual Šumava King characters to their real-world prototypes. Emphasis is placed on film analysis and the eponymous novel Král Šumavy (King of Šumava) together with the post-revolutionary prose works Smrt Krále Šumavy (Death of the Šumava King) and Návrat Krále Šumavy (Return of the Šumava King). The concluding section articulates both the contrasting and the shared features of individual representations, which are often closely associated with the period in which any given work was written. To summarize, none of the works under review goes against the paradigm of its era, so that we may generally categorize those written before 1989 as the Communist Šumava King anti-myth (people-smuggler characters who play exclusively negative roles), while the later ones, referring to the inhumanity of 1950s totalitarianism and the need to fight against it, may be categorized as the post-Communist Šumava King myth.

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