On the intertextual connections between contemporary Czech and French dystopias: case studies

Abstract

The following paper focuses on the analysis of intertextual connec- tions, parallels and relations of contemporary Czech and French prose works that belong to the genre category of dystopia and at the same time thematise potential future cultural or social conflict in Europe (civil wars, terrorism, religious fanaticism, the decline of democracy, etc.). In several case studies, the study seeks to test a hypothesis arising from a preliminary perception of the corpus of works – namely, the existence and recoverability of an inventory of motifs, structures, narrative schemes or spatio-temporal constants. At the theoretical level, the paper relies primarily on those conceptions of intertextuality that trace a genetic correlation arising from the nature of genre, period or style poetics, and tradition; the paper therefore comparatively examines, in three working areas (categories), what elements are involved in establishing the intertextual links of a given genre in works of the last approximately two decades.