ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book reassembles the 15 translations back into their chronological order and consider them in this broader historical context. While the majority of the translators acknowledge the centrality of the theme of romantic love in the collection, and Feldek’s version harks back to the narrative of a male lover from the pre-revolutionary Sonnets with his use of the now archaic term milý, other translators take a different view of this relationship. Urbankova’s 1997 version systematically replaces allusions to romantic love with mentions of friendship, which become particularly striking when seen as retrospective revisions imposed on her 1976 translations. Queer theory is a powerful methodological tool that not only challenges the traditional definitions of gender and desire, but also destabilises the norms, binaries, and categories that are present in all structures of our societies.
