This article deals with prose written by Věra Linhartová and published between 1964 and 1968. The focus of the article is on the noetic and philosophical dimension of words as one of the main features of Linhartová’s poetics – Linhartová is trying to reflect immediate subjective ideas in her texts. The word “idea” (představa) in Linhartová’s texts refers to the intentions of the characters – i.e. what they intend to communicate in the particular moment. The trio of the speaking subject, words and ideas forms the basis for the noetic and philosophical reflections in Linhartová’s texts, with the form of the texts as the practical counterpart to these reflective passages.
This paper presents an analysis of the “rhetorical plural” as used in the prose of Věra Linhartová, namely in her Povídka nesouvislá (An incoherent story), included in the prose collection Prostor k rozlišení (Space to Discriminate, 1964), and in two texts from the collection Meziprůzkum nejblíž uplynulého (Interim Research into the Most Recent Past, 1964), entitled Totéž později and Račí kánon na běsovské téma (The same thing later, A crab canon on a fiendish theme, respectively). The first part of the study devotes attention to different types of text subjects and their involvement in the process of (literary) communication. The theoretical definition of various types of the first person plural presented by grammar and style handbooks or other specialised works is also the subject of brief examination. The second part of the paper focuses on the functions carried out by the first person plural in Věra Linhartová’s prose. Our aim is to show that the authorial plural in artistic texts need not serve the function assigned to this grammatical device in specialised texts and that the authorial plural must be distinguished from the inclusive plural, as these types not only perform different functions, but also refer to different referents.
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