Proč je slunce na obloze samo. Jak vznikl Vladislavův pohádkový svět

This article charts Jan Vladislav’s Proč je slunce na obloze samo. Pohádky o tom, jak vznikl svět (Why the sun is alone on the horizon: Fairy tales about the genesis of the world, 2017). It also describes the special features of this collection. The article begins with a discussion of the circumstances surrounding the writing of the manuscript and then its publication in Czechoslovakia in the years of restored hard-line Communist rule after the Soviet-led intervention in 1968. It then focuses on the sources Vladislav drew on for this prose fiction and on the way he works here with the oral tradition. The composition of the volume is based on the idea of a fairy-tale encyclopaedia that explains to the youngest readers the origin of natural phenomena and the characteristics of fauna and flora as they have appeared in the folk tales of various peoples and tribes around the world. For the author, the retelling of folk tales in the form of etiological fairy tales and fables meant that he had to become familiar with traditional genres of literature for children and young people, while preserving the poetic quality in his writing based on folk versions of the stories.