This study aims to give a new perspective on Josef Jiří Kolár’s short story Libuše in America (German 1842, Czech 1854), long considered by critics and literary historians as a kind of popular adventure story without ideological or aesthetic ambitions. The study frst examines Kolár’s prose in the context of a contemporary domestic historical short story that takes liberties with its historical source material. In Libuše in America, however, such liberties are exaggerated to the point of founding an alternate parallel history in opposition to the tragic nature of actual historical events. Te next part of the study uses specifc examples to show how the efect of this discrepancy between the fantasy and the real world is intensifed by the original use of compositional, lexical, grammatical and poetic means (i.e. plot parallels, ‘inappropriate’ relationships between characters, linguistic exclusivity and expressiveness, contrasting poetics, and vulgarity). The fnal section shows the mutual refection of an idealized Czech society in America and the real situation in Bohemia as a manifestation of romantic irony and product of the author’s bitter refections on the decline of the Czech world.
The article tries to offer a reading of Borges’ fiction through the theory of romantic irony. First, it briefly outlines the “history of irony”, beginning with the approach of Plato’s Socrates, continuing with the late antiquity and its mostly rhetorical interpretation of irony as a means of expressing a thought through its opposite. The real focus of the article is the romantic irony, in particular the views of Friedrich Schlegel, who was one of the chief theoreticians of German romanticism. The reading of Borges’ short stories is attempted, the point of departure being two Shekel’s fragments that offer contrasting and complementary possibilities of interpretation. The first explains romantic irony in the context of the notion of chaos and possibility, the second draws on the concept of parabasis, known from the theory of Ancient Greek drama. The first interpretation tries to show Borges’ poetics as a poetics of possibility; the short story Library of Babel serves as an example. The second interpretation shows how the motives of waking up, creation and game can all be connected through the concept of parabasis and shows a group of Borges’ text, including some poems, that can be considered ironic in this special sense.
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