ABSTRACT
One of the priorities in intercultural communication is the ability to see one’s culture from the outside. Research has been carried out on national stereotypes in literature, but for the most part this has emphasized the representation of Germanophone peoples in British and American literature (imagology). This chapter will look at the representation of a different sample culture—here Czechs and Czechness—in anglophone literature over the 20th century in a variety of genres, from popular fiction and journalism to literary fiction. Such an approach is not reducible to the sociology of literature, but can lead to original readings of literature by a range of canonical authors, such as Philip Roth, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bruce Chatwin, John Banville, Anthony Trollope, and Agatha Christie. This allows a restructuring of the content knowledge of literary curricula for second-language teacher education, demonstrating skills for negotiating cultural difference.
