Hry o požáru : protektorátní drama jako příklad alegorické komunikace

• Authors: Pavel Janoušek

Title variants

EN

Plays about fires : protectorate drama as an example of allegorical communication

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This study focuses on three dramas written during the occupation (i.e. at a time when drama and literary communication were very stringently regulated by Protectorate and Reich censorship), each dealing with the motif of a fire threatening the existence of a family business (a laundry, a mill and a factory), and each conceived in a similar fashion. Two of them — Hra na schovávanou (Hide and Seek, 1939) by Olga Scheinpflugová and Červený mlýn (The Red Mill, 1940) by Richard Werner — used this motif as an easily understandable allegory, which by means of this seemingly ‘innocuous’ private sujetenabled them to express the sense of national jeopardy felt within that political situation and to appeal to the Czechs’ sense of solidarity, as well as to express their views on “how we got into this situation in the first place”, the difference between them being that Scheinpflugová was a defender of prewar liberal democracy, whereas Werner was, if anything, attacking it. Although the third drama Zámek Miyajima (Miyajima Castle, 1944), appears to be an apolitical Ibsenesque play without any topical allusions, at the time in question it also expressed the attitude of its author Olga Barényi, a woman who identified with the Protectorate regime to such an extent that she started to come out against Czechness and the Czechs. Hence analysis and comparison of these three different works which share a single motif can show how the differing authors’ positions within their allegorical communications are reflected in the semantic, ideational and plot structures of the individual literary works.

Keywords

CS

Olga Scheinpflugová; Olga Barényiová; Richard Werner; hry; protektorátní drama

EN

Olga Scheinpflugová; Olga Barényi; Richard Werner; plays; protectorate drama

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Česká literatura (Czech Literature)
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 67
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 32-59
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Pavel Janoušek

• Česká literatura, redakce, Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, v. v. i., Na Florenci 3/1420, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic