Us and Them: Presenting America 1948-1956

• Thesis title in English: Us and Them: Presenting America 1948-1956
• Key words: překladová literatura, Československo, padesátá léta, studená válka, transnacionalismus, američtí levicoví autoři, Howard Fast, Langston Hughes
• English key words: literature in translation, Czechoslovakia, 1950s, Cold War, transnationalism, American leftist writers, Howard Fast, Langston Hughes
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Justin Quinn, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 24.06.2015
• Date of assignment: 24.06.2015
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 28.07.2016
• Date and time of defence: 06.09.2016 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 28.07.2016
• Date of proceeded defence: 06.09.2016
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Stephan Delbos, M.F.A., Ph.D.

Guidelines

According to Pascale Casanova, the ‘literary universe’ is not limited by the geography or politics: it is “relatively independent of the everyday world and its political divisions.”[1]She claims that the national states of the centre – the ‘dominating’ national states - no longer need literature to establish the national identity and their literatures have, therefore, “managed to free themselves from political constrains.”[2]In her view, the Weltliteratur is now “bound to obey no other law then the law of literature.”[3]
Looking closely at transmitting one culture into another, there are, however still certain boundaries: and language would be only one of them. But language is not the only border to be crossed by a literary work: in the process of crossing the actual, geopolitical border, the “literary visa” might be very hard to obtain. (The term “literary visa” was - very conveniently, considering the similar processes involved - used by Zuzana Semínová in her article on the beginnings of the Světová literatura[4]). In the dominated society, as was the Czechoslovakian society from the 1948 (with the Soviet Union as a centre where all the main political and cultural impulses came from), the ‘political struggles’ were not only the struggles Casanova describes (which were supposed to establish and reinforce the national state) but they were establishing new norms: the norm of production and the ideological norm.[5] Both disrupt the notion of literary market as “a space in which the sole value recognized by all participants – literary value – circulates and is traded.”[6] The ideological norm dictated by the state together with the “denial of the free market”[7] leads to a situation where the ‘literary value’ is directly controlled by the state. In the Czechoslovakia of the 1950s, the ideological norm directly determined the cultural politics of book publishing: by the means of censorship and also by the direct influence on the edition plans of publishing companies.[8] The state decided how is something going to be “presented to the recipients” and also the “official framework for interpretation.”[9] This is especially important for the official representation of the cultural ‘Other’ of the Soviet Union and its satellites – the US.
The cultural ‘Other’ plays a key role in establishing literary tradition, as the national literature is established through “literary rivalries:” through differentiation and opposition.[10]In the Cold War context, this rivalry plays an especially important role. It is, however, not only opposition: similarities and mirror images are also an integral part of this intercultural ‘dialogue.’ According to Andrew N. Rubin, there is a significant shift in the US cultural politics in the post-war years as well: the change of “institutional relationship between intellectuals and state.”[11]According to him, this new politics involved “the development of new strategies and methods to suppress and eliminate dissent.” [12]
The aim of this thesis is to compare these “strategies and methods” on both sides of the Iron Curtain in late forties and early fifties and how they interreacted with each other. The main focus is on the image of America (both negative and positive) the official structures were trying to create through translation, publishing and critical reception of American literature, as a part of the effort of both sides to claim the ‘Cold War narrative.’

[1]Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M.B. DeBevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004) xii.
[2]Casanova 43.
[3]Casanova 37.
[4]Zuzana Semínová, “Počátky časopisu světová literatura a Angloameričtí autoři,” www. souvislosti.cz,
Souvislosti – Revue pro literaturu a kulturu, 2003 <http://www.souvislosti.cz/103/semin.html> 14 Jan. 2015.
[5]Eva Forstová, Knihy podle norem - Kulturní instituce v systému řízené kultury. Státní nakladatelství krásné literatury, hudby a umění (Praha: Filozofická fakulta UK, 2013) 13.
[6]Casanova 13.
[7]Forstová 10.
[8]Forstová 13.
[9]Bauer, Michal. Souvislosti labyrintu: Kodifikace ideologicko-estetické normy v české literatuře 50.let 20.století (Praha: Akropolis, 2009) 8.
[10]Casanova 36.
[11]Andrew N. Rubin, Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War: Empire, Culture (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012) 21.
[12]Rubin 17.

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