Od obdivu k zatracení: česká recepce Julese Romainse

• Authors: Smrčka Jiří

Title variants

EN

FROM ADMIRATION TO DAMNATION: THE CZECH RECEPTION OF JULES ROMAINS

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The article discusses the transformation of the relationship of Czech literature to the French writer Jules Romains, the chief representative of Unanimism, during the 20th century. In the period before and just after WWI, the emerging generation of authors received him with almost boundless admiration. In the interwar period, he was ideologically aligned with Karel Čapek’s generation and was publicly presented in the Czech cultural environment as the leading representative of contemporary French writing. A turning point came in the autumn of 1938, when, as a proponent of the idea of pacifism, he defended the principles of the Munich Agreement. Romains, originally seen as a friend of the Czechs, became a symbol of the French betrayal. After 1948, Romains’s post-Munich positions were placed in the context of the premises of Unanimism, which, in the perspective of the Marxist approach to literature, appeared to be ideologically mistaken because it neglected the agency of class aspects in the dynamics of society. Romains thus fell into the periphery of interest and into near oblivion. Only one-third of his major novel cycle Men of Good Will remains tanslated into Czech.

Keywords

EN

Jules Romains; unanimism; social novel

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Czech Republic
• Journal: Svět literatury – Časopis pro novodobé literatury (World of Literature – Journal for Modern Literatures)
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 65
• Pages: 131-149

Contributors

author

Smrčka Jiří