Die faktualen und fiktionalen Texte Jiří Weils

Brunová Marie, Reinhard Ibler (ed.)

The aim of this thesis is to examine the work of the Czech writer Jiří Weil (1900-1959) from the point of view of factual and fictional narration. Texts declaring a right to “referentialisation” (Referenzialisierbarkeit/ Martínez and Scheffel) are considered factual, which means that they claim anchoring in empirical reality. Texts that do not pursue such a claim are considered fictional. In addition, fictional texts are characterised by the presence of so-called “signposts of fictionality”, namely the presence of a heterodiegetic narrator, as well as the possible insight into the psyche of acting characters. Based on these premises and the fact that Weil worked on the same thematic complexes in different types of texts, three of his most productive text types were examined: reports, short stories and novels. The resulting analysis showed that in his work Weil often used reports as a kind of pre-text, subsequently transforming them into short stories. He accomplished this transformation by using the approach of facts generalisation and focusing on human destiny. However, he allowed almost no intervention on the “level of narration” (Ebene der Erzählung/ Zipfel), which was a particularity in his novels. It should be noted that he used these approaches primarily in his pre-war work, but followed them, even if just to a certain extent, also in texts that were written after the war.