The Beat Generation in Communist Czechoslovakia: the Editorial Paratexts and the Construction of the Author

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14640%2F18%3A00103742" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14640/18:00103742 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

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DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

The Beat Generation in Communist Czechoslovakia: the Editorial Paratexts and the Construction of the Author

Original language description

After the controversy surrounding Josef Škvorecký’s novel The Cowards in the late 1950s, the official ideologues in communist Czechoslovakia increased their stranglehold on literature. As a result, publishing Western and especially American literature, already a challenging and politicized task, had been constrained even further. Therefore, publishers had to carefully package their releases in order to appease the censors. The most common means of such textual reconstruction were cautiously written book covers and especially editorial prefaces or afterwords. This was also the case with the publication of several Beat Generation texts during the period. Publisher’s paratexts, such as the afterwords of the editor Jan Zábrana, usually contrasted the author’s life in relation to the values of socialist Czechoslovakia. By highlighting not only the Beats’ dissatisfaction with American consumerism but also their inability to reach the “correct” ideological stance, these paratexts managed to portray the Beats as nonconformist, yet still ideologically acceptable writers, and therefore fit for publication. Sharply contrasting with the often sensationalist portrayal of the Beats in their home country, the textual strategies of Czechoslovak editors necessary for publication of the Beats thus reveal the publisher’s paratexts as texts able to reconstruct the author in a frequently contradictory manner.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

O - Miscellaneous

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60200 - Languages and Literature

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2018

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů