ENG 3305-01: Czech Literature
Dr. John M. Ulrich

Czech literature is inseparable from Czech history. This history has often been a painful one, indelibly marked by both the horror of the Nazi occupation and the repression of the Communist regime. While such catastrophic events have had an enormous impact on Czech culture, so too has Czech resistance and resilience in the face of such violence and oppression, and Czech literature reflects this dual aspect of the Czech identity. Using Ivan Klima's The Spirit of Prague as our guide to the Czech experience, we will begin our survey with Jaroslav Hasek's subversively comic novel The Good Soldier Svjek, followed by the nightmarish world of Franz Kafka's The Trial. Other readings will include: children's drawings and poems from the Terezin concentration camp; Arnost Lustig's short story collection, The Children of the Holocaust; Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Bohumil Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude; The Garden Party and other plays by Vaclav Havel; and a selection of works by contemporary Czech women writers.

Book List

Note: All texts are required. All editions are in paperback.

1. Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Svejk. Penguin, 1974. 0-14-018274-8

2. Franz Kafka, The Trial. Schocken Books, 1995. 0-80-521040-7

3. Hana Volavkova, ed. . . .I Never Saw Another Butterfly . . .: Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. Schocken Books, 1994. 0-8052-1015-6

4. Arnost Lustig, Children of the Holocaust. Northwestern University Press, 1995. 0-8101-1279-5

5. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. HarperCollins, 1984. 0-06-091465-3

6. Vaclav Havel, The Garden Party and Other Plays. Grove Press, 1993. 0-8021-3307-X

7. Ivan Klima, The Spirit of Prague. Granta Books, 1994. 0-14-014068-9

8. Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude. Harcourt Brace, 1990. 0-15-690458-6

9. Alexandra Buchler, Allskin and other tales by contemporary czech women. Women In Translation, 1998. 1-879679-11-6