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The paper introduces the Sylvie Richterová´s way of thinking about Czech literature. Sylvie Richterová (1945), Czech literary theoretist, poet and prose writer, former lecturer of Czech language and literature at the universities of Rome, Padova and Viterbo, is the author of a number of inspiring studies on Czech literature (written in Italian, French and Czech - in Czech language published in following volumes: Words and Silence, Silence and Laughter, Place of Home, respectively Essays on Czech Literature). Exploiting her own novelist experience in the genre of essays she presents systematic and complex conception of Czech literature deeply rooted in Prague structuralism, semiology and aesthetics. Referring often to the terminology of Jan Mukařovský and other structuralists (sign, structure, anthropological constant, centre and periphery) Richterová regularly bases her analysies in philosophy (H.-G. Gadamer, H. Bergson, R. Girard, J. Baudrillard, C. Segre, N. Luhmann) as well as other extra-literary inspirations. To her most important interests belong the relationship between ethics and art and the aspect of language (“crises of language/speech”). Moreover, she enriches her treatises with other stimuli, such as the methods of contemplative (close) reading, findings of modern psychology (e.g. G. Lacan) or even natural sciences (e.g. K. Gödel). To the “keywords´ list” of her conception belong: identity, silence, laugh, power, stupidity (idiocy), non/sense; special attention is also paid to the (Central European) modern history including totalitarian regimes. On these foundations she newly discovers the works of most prominent Czech writers, such as Jaroslav Hašek, Milan Kundera, Bohumil Hrabal, Karel Čapek, Věra Linhartová, Ludvík Vaculík, Jan Skácel, Jan Amos Komenský and many others.
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