Narativní způsoby v české próze 19. století

The monograph, written by a team of authors, presents the findings of a first attempt at systematically studying the features of Czech fictional narratives, spanning various genres and several decades of the 19th century. The methodology of diachronic poetics of narration complies with one of the requirements of contemporary narratology, which is to respect the historicity of narratives and to interpret them within the context of contemporary cultural norms and communication practice. The choice of instruments employed in the analysis is determined by the narrative features that have been confirmed as truly essential for understanding its history. Studying the ways in which narratorial authority is consolidated has proven to be more helpful than applying the established typology of narrators. It was more useful to observe when each character speaks, what they speak about, and how they share the narration with the narrator than to concentrate, as usual, on the transitions between different perspectives. Similarly, it was more helpful to identify cultural norms as parameters delineating the content of a description, which determines its internal logic, rather than deciding whether the description is static or dynamic. The individual chapters present works by novelists who are still considered to be the leading figures of the entire period, such as Božena Němcová and Alois Jirásek, as well as works by authors who represented a stable and reader-friendly segment of literary communication, such as František Pravda and Prokop Chocholoušek. The interconnected nature of the text makes it possible to present the same works from different perspectives, emphasising both the synergy and the counterproductiveness of narrative modes.