View of rurality in Czech and Polish prose in 1960s (interpretation of selected literary works)

The subject matter of this thesis is the presentation of a typology of rural imagery based on a thematic and interpretative analysis of Polish and Czech literary texts from the 1960s with respect to the ongoing changes made to the original romantic-realist concept of the rural novel. The analysis of specific literary works (Sekyra by Ludvík Vaculík, Smuteční slavnost by Eva Kantůrková, and Čas kopřiv by Josef Knap from Czech literature, and, from Polish literature, Opadaný sad by Wiesław Myśliwski, the novels Na slunci by Julian Kawalec and … až budeš králem, až budeš katem… by Tadeusz Nowak) permits us to create a basic register of elements of rural narrativity which, however, Czech and Polish literatures have different perspectives on. Through this dichotomy we present typical narratives contained in the Czech and Polish rural novel of the given period. The subsequent interpretative analysis of the texts takes inspiration from contemporary narratology with special attention to the narrator and time categories, and by extension to the interplay of these categories with individual themes, symbols and topoi