Milan Kundera: from Poetics to Critique

Abstract

This article examines Milan Kundera’s aesthetic and critical thought through The Art of the Novel and his later essays. It analyzes the way in which Milan Kundera defines the novel as a form of knowledge irreducible to ideological discourses and as a site of resistance to totalizing logics. The study addresses the articulation between novel theory, the legacy of European modernity, novelistic practice, and the autonomy of artistic creation. It adopts an analytical approach, based on a close reading of Milan Kundera’s essays and their contextualization in relation to the works of Mikhaïl Bakhtin, György Lukács, and Roland Barthes. The analysis shows that Milan Kundera conceives of the novel as a “wisdom of uncertainty”, grounded in ambiguity, the plurality of perspectives, and the rejection of closed truths. The findings highlight a conception of the novel that combines the defense of aesthetic autonomy, the critique of dogmatism, and the affirmation of literature’s role in preserving critical freedom and the complexity of human experience within the contemporary European context.