The True Czech Story of “The Deck of Cards”: Origins, Reception and Intermediality
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2024 |
| Druh | Další prezentace na konferencích |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Popis | In 1948 a country singer T. Texas Tyler recorded "The Deck of Cards", spoken-word hit which tells the story of a World War II soldier who is dealing cards in a church and for which he is brought to the marshall to be punished. However, he defends himself and proves that the cards serve as his prayer book, Bible and calendar. This hit has received many other revivals, for example in connection with the Vietnam War, and judging by the response on YouTube, it still seems to be finding an audience. The well-known song Deck of Cards began spread in the Czech territories since the 1970s, when a successful cover version made it famous. Its popularity is evidenced by the fact that the song has spread to the scout songbooks and that it has received several parodies. Nevertheless, if we try to look for the roots of this hit, we find that it was originally a chapbook (the earliest version is documented from the second half of the 18th century from Wales) and that there can be found numerous language variants of the chapbook from the first half of the 19th century in French, English, Swedish, Danish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Icelandic – and even Czech. In this paper we will present the story of the text about the soldier and the cards in a global and local context. In the local aspect we will focus on the preserved Czech and German versions of the chapbook and analyse them in terms of structure, content (e.g. religious motifs), form and materiality. Special attention will be paid to the reception of the chapbook up to the present, including false identification of the story with a “real” character and parodies. Deck of cards chapbook we see as a typical example of intercultural exchange and a proof of “incompleteness” of popular literature (FISKE), for which openness to further re-readings and re-interpretations is typical. |
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