Czech literary theorist Lubomír Doležel was born in Lesnice and studied at a secondary school in Zábřeh until the autumn of 1938, when the school was closed by German occupiers. He finally took his school leaving examinations at the secondary school in Litovel in 1941.
In April 1944 Mr Doležel was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned until the American army liberated the prison in April 1945. After the universities were reopened, he registered to study Czech and Russian studies at the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. Here he became familiar with Czech structuralism and semiotics of the “Prague School”, a theme which he carried through to his fi rst book, O stylu moderní české prózy. Výstavba textu (On the Style of Modern Czech Prose, Text Construction, 1960). Mr Doležel spent the years between 1965 and 1968 at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor as a professor of the Czech language and interpreter of Czech structuralism. He returned to Prague in June 1968, but emigrated to Canada in November of the same year, where he became a professor of Czech language and literature at the University of Toronto. Here he contributed signifi cantly to the foundation of a Czech studies programme at all levels of Canadian university studies (a programme that remains active to this day). In 1982 he was appointed professor of comparative literature with a specialisation in literary theory. He visited a number of universities and actively took part in many conferences in Canada, the United States of America, Europe and Israel. After the Velvet Revolution, he participated in scholarly conferences in Czechoslovakia and later in the Czech Republic, and lectured at Charles and Masaryk Universities.
Lubomír Doležal was among the laureates Gratias agit 2010 accolade to outstanding personalities and organisations for promoting the good name of the Czech Republic abroad. More
Taken by Gratias Agit Award Laureates 2010
E lubomir.dolezel@utoronto.ca
More about the author here.
Interview with Ian Willoughby (Czech Radio, May 3, 2010)
