Abstrakt
The claim of literary authenticity in the early 1990s is related to the depoliticization of most spheres of the society. In this period people from the Czech literary field rhetorically rejected all their social roles and commitments.
Writers were supposed to create a new, "natural" literature not influenced by politics. One of the words most frequently used by the literary critics was "authenticity".
One of the most popular genres was the so-called authentic (biographical) literature and literary critics appreciated authenticity (actuality) of the novels. Another meaning of this term was related to the post-dissident circle, which was influenced by Jan Lopatka's work.
For them, authentic literature resulted from the moral integrity of the writer. I will attempt to reconstruct the different meanings of the term and to show that, at that time, the authenticity replaced politics in the role of the source of meaning and the referent outside of literature.
I will focus on the ways in which social and political issues were misrepresented by overuse of the term "authenticity" as well as on conflicts about the definition of authenticity itself.