Eva Blinková Pelánová
The ‘Modern Rebuke’ and Emotional Education in the Context of Literary Naturalism: Two Distinct Possibilities in a Fictional World
Drawing on examples from Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle (1871-1893) and from Karel Matěj Čapek-Chod's introduction to his collection of short stories Povídky (published in book form in 1916), this contribution addresses issues of axiology in the context of literary naturalism. While Zola's fiction is thought to reveal sociological patterns, and his narrator does not shy from descriptions of social decline, Čapek-Chod's writing is characterized by a noetic scepticism that is not explicitly postulated by the narrator and does not typically involve narrative distance. Citing the example of workhorses (in Germinal), the article highlights the importance of the construction of leitmotifs for both authors. The uniformly applied leitmotif, however, points to a different concept of axiology, which in Zola is straightforward and essentially didactic, while in Čapek-Chod, where it suggests a fundamental scepticism, emerges only gradually and always against the original conviction of the protagonist, or in contradiction to the impression with which the story or its elements initially affect the reader. Throughout the work, Čapek-Chod likes to work with situations in which the characters suddenly realize the illusory nature of their original convictions. With reference to the novel by Flaubert, we may think of it as a 'sentimental education'.
Keywords: Karel Matěj Čapek-Chod - literary naturalism - Gustave Flaubert
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