BODY IDENTITY IN BOHUMIL HRABAL’S NOVEL “I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND”

The purpose of the paper is to examine the specificity of the modeling of the character-narrator’sbody identity in B. Hrabal’s novel “I Served the King of England”. Firstly it stresses on the body-centerednature of the narration in this literary work, in which the evolution of personality is representedas “a history of the body”. The study focuses on the techniques of restructurizing “the body scheme”and the manifestation of psychophysiological transgression caused by the existing “archetypalcanons”. It traces the correlation of the semantics of the body identity with the aesthetic categoriesof the beautiful and the ugly and with gender differentiation. The paper also considers gastronomyas one of the aspects of bodiliness in B. Hrabal’s novel. It details the poetics of grotesque which manifestsitself in the descriptions of the body emphasizing its objectiveness. The study looks at the Rabelaisiantraditions followed by the writer in the depiction of the scenes connected with eating both everydayfood and exotic dishes. The research underlines that the body in B. Hrabal’s novel is displayedas a genetic data medium, visualized through physical characteristics, that highlights the socialarrangement of the body identity problems. It pays attention to the social function of a humanface in archaic societies originally interpreted in the novel. The research determines the peculiaritiesof the space marking of the body in the literary work and its correlation with the binary opposition“top–bottom”. It looks at the formation of the body identity by means of a mirror reflection andthe image of the double. The conclusions of the research emphasize the specificity of the modelingof the body identity in the novel of the Czech writer. The results of this scientific paper can be usedin further research on B. Hrabal literary prose and in comparative studie