The Prague Orgy: The Life of Writers in a Totalitarian State According to Philip Roth

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F19%3A73594006" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/19:73594006 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/8/2/71" target="_blank" >https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/8/2/71</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

The Prague Orgy: The Life of Writers in a Totalitarian State According to Philip Roth

Original language description

This paper deals with the way Philip Roth depicted writers in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s in his novella The Prague Orgy, the final part of the Zuckerman Bound tetralogy. Researchers often read The Prague Orgy in the context of the entire tetralogy and accentuate the contact with Jewish topics. The primary focus of the paper is how Roth views Czech writers and their lives through the eyes of his long-term hero (and fictional alter-ego) Nathan Zuckerman and how he perceives life in a totalitarian state. The Prague Orgy is discussed as a somewhat abstract story about the writer’s freedom and responsibility of their work. There are three types of writers in The Prague Orgy: The émigré (Sisovsky), the dissenter (Bolotka), and the pro-regime (Novak). Each of them, in an interview with Roth’s hero, formulates his attitude to the regime. Zuckerman is fascinated by the life of opposition artists, their experience of freedom (realized in the private sphere), and the social response to their work. Although the reality of life in Czechoslovakia under communism is not the main topic of the novella, the paper concludes that the depiction of life of Czech underground intellectuals interested mostly in sex is in consonance with the picture of Czech dissent in official regime propaganda.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_ost - Miscellaneous article in a specialist periodical

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60206 - Specific literatures

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

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

Name of the periodical

Humanities

ISSN

2076-0787

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

8

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

CH - SWITZERLAND

Number of pages

11

Pages from-to

71

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

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