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The Short Prosaic Form of the Czech Literary Decadence
SOUKUP, Jiří
The goal of the work advanced is to examine the problems of the Czech literary decadence, the term itself and the possible limits of its use. As a basic material we investigate a corpus of texts belonging mainly to the short story genre, also paying attention to the model of a decadent novel and being interested in the most significant decadent features. The problems of literary decadence do not belong to profoundly explored topics in the history of the Czech literature, incidentally conditioned by the preference of the symbolist and decadent poetry. That is why this work was to present some texts themselves, potentially representative for the model of a decadent short story genre and of certain artistic value. The text of this work consists of three main parts. The first presents the possibilities of progressive insight into the topic, its cultural and philosophical context, showing two model novels (Huysmans{\crq} A Rebours and Wilde{\crq}s The Picture of Dorian Gray) as different but relevant types of the decadent living scheme, the specific conception of life and the role of art in it. The second part applies several theoretical questions onto the topic, constructing the form. In the final part more than two tens of original Czech short stories are concerned and the thematic composition analysed, that at least some questions asked in the previous parts could be answered and certain theses postulated proved.
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