The untraditionally traditional fairy tales by Karel Čapek

This paper deals with the fairy tales by Karel Čapek. In the first part, we mention the historical context: the interest in fairy tales, including the fights for fairy tales. We also deal with the anthology Nůše pohádek and its importance for the development of modern fairy tales. We further describe the place that the fairy tales have in Čapek's 1920s works and we analyze Čapek's fairy-tale-theory, which was presented in his theoretical essays. In the second part of this paper, we cope with Karel Čapek's fairy tales specifically, namely with their motives and style. Our aim is to show, why they are considered as untraditional