Jak se cestuje a vypravuje o cestování: nástin mezižánrové hry mezi Čapkovými cestopisy a komerčními turistickými žánry

Abstract

This paper discusses the intergeneric construction of Karel Čapek's travel writings, which represent a complex fictional structure founded on the interaction between non-fiction, lowbrow and highbrow genres. In particular, the paper analyses the influence of the commercial tourist handbook as a possible non-fictional source of travel writing. Even though Čapek's traveller mocks the standardised structure and petrified vocabulary of tourist handbooks, in various places he admits that he travelled with a copy of the Baedeker in his hands. The article outlines how he expressed and subverted intergeneric links by fictionalising the two prominent features of the tourist handbooks: narratological (physical and communicative distance between the narrator and the reader/listener) and visual structure. This results not only in a new reading of Čapek's travelogues, but also in a new perspective on traditional "Čapkian" themes, such as the question of "ordinariness" and identity