The Function of Intra- and Intertextual References in the Poetological System of Ivana Dobrakovová’s Debut Prvá smrť v rodine (First death in the family)

Abstract

The article analyses the function of intra- and intertextual references in Ivana Dobrakovová’s first book Prvá smrť v rodine (First death in the family, 2009), taking the principle of disintegration as the basic principle of Dobrakovová’s writing. As a result of author’s intratextual work, the texts transgress the genre of short story and foreground the monoperspectival narrative consciousness. This in turn leads to a pronounced relativisation of the position of the narrative category of character and to situationally constituted narrative forms as related to the “theme-problem” horizon of the work. Intertextual work, on the other hand, contaminates the monoperspectival narrative consciousness and in this way disqualifies it. The principle of disintegration leads to an accentuation of the presence of the implied author which in turn makes the text seem more autobiographical. The figure of the implied author (which can never be identified with the empirical writer) is aesthetically productive: although it is fully governed by the poetics of the text, it also allows the readers to evoke the empirical author. The poetics thus creates conditions for ambivalence – the analysed texts can be read both as fiction and as autobiography.

Keywords

• ivana dobrakovová
• intratextuality
• intertextuality
• implied author
• autobiography