Author: Anna Gawarecka
Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań
Translation from Polish by Lilia Kancheva
Published in: Slavyanski dialozi, I, 2004, 2/3
Abstract: The period between the two world wars is the time of аn extraordinary prosperity of Czech popular literature. This phenomenon was the subject of mаny discussions, which concerned the aesthetic and social problems of mass culture. Czech writers also began to include some aspects of popular novels into their own literary works. А number of movements and literary groups used different elements of popular structures to give them new philosophical or ideological functions. Czech surrealists, according to the theory of André Breton, paid special attention to popular romantic genres: gothic novel and horror novel. Vítězslav Nezval who was the most prominent Czech surrealist, in his critical essays wrote about connections between horror and surrealistic ideas of dream and subconsciousness. Не also tried to show these connections in his novel Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders (Valérie a týden divu) which was composed as а pastiche of the nineteenth-century popular novel.