Publication details
The Many Lives in Ota Filip’s Autobiographies
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Partial Answers-Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | online přístup ke studii |
| Keywords | Ota Filip; Bohumil Hrabal; Korthals Altes; autobiography; autofiction; cognitive science; hermeneutics |
| Description | The study examines two autofictional narratives — The Seventh Autobiography (2000) and The Eight, or Unfinished Autobiography (2007) by the Czech writer Ota Filip (1930–2018). The texts were written in reaction to a media scandal as well as some traumatic events in the author’s private life. The study attempts to understand the different ways in which the two texts were received, both in the Czech context and when compared to the reactions to the German version, Der siebente Lebenslauf (2001). The cognitive-hermeneutic theory of autobiography and autofiction by Liesbeth Korthals Altes is the basis of my analysis of textual and paratextual clues that allow reading the Autobiographies in different cognitive frames, or in the evaluation framework of “five worlds” as presented by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot. An intepretation of Filip’s works within the concept of the “Inspired World” is also related to the context of Czech autofiction literature (Ludvík Vaculík, Pavel Kohout, Bohumil Hrabal). |