Jules Verne in Central Europe: The Reception of His Works in the Czech Lands in Comparative Perspective

Περίληψη

This article offers a theoretical overview of the reception of Jules Verne’s works in the Czech lands in comparison with selected Central European contexts. Its main aim is to examine how Verne’s works were integrated into Czech literary culture and to identify the factors that contributed to their long-term visibility, popularity, and canonization. The study approaches reception as a dynamic literary and cultural process shaped by translation, retranslation, republication, adaptation, educational mediation, and reading culture. Within this framework, the Czech case emerges as particularly significant due to the combination of a stable and well-developed reading culture and a strong tradition of literary translation, which together created favourable conditions for the sustained presence of Verne’s works in both educational and recreational reading. The article further argues that Verne’s enduring reception in Central Europe is closely linked to his ability to mediate key ideas of modernity, especially science, progress, discovery, and imagination, while remaining adaptable to changing literary and cultural frameworks. A comparative perspective on Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia shows that Verne’s works circulated across Central Europe through similar mechanisms of translation and adaptation, yet the Czech reception appears to have acquired a particularly durable and culturally stabilised form. The article therefore interprets the Czech reception of Verne as a particularly revealing example of the interaction between translation, cultural memory, and canon formation in Central European literary history.