Abstract
Kundera rode into Western European literature on the donkey of misunderstanding. This misunderstanding has affected the reception of his work both abroad and in the Czech Republic. He was published in France and Great Britain short after the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and both political circumstances, the foreword by Aragon in the French edition and the editorial choices by his British publisher underlined the political nature of the work, reinforcing the stereotype of an 'Eastern European' author. Kundera has since tried to correct this false impression: most notably in his fore- and afterwords and in his essays, but this only seems to make matters worse: Many critics see Kundera's interventions as heavy-handed ways of posing a correct way to read the novels. By analyzing the intricate relation between novel, paratexte and reception, exemplified by Kundera's first novel, The Joke, I argue that this is not the case.
| Original language | French |
|---|---|
| Journal | Neohelicon |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 179-205 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| ISSN | 0324-4652 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jun 2010 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Humanities