This article deals with the aesthetic views that Vladislav Vančura formulated in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Vančura sympathetically followed the emergence of Prague structuralism and its concepts. The dominant role of the aesthetic function in art met his requirement for “poeticity”, while in Vančura’s works the structuralists found suitable material to support their concepts. Jan Mukařovský wrote about Vančura in a positive light not only in the 1930s and 1940s, but also later on, when Vančura’s works found themselves in potential conflict with the demands of “realism” and “the people”. An example of the reverse case, i.e. a fundamental misunderstanding based on different ideas about literature, can be found in the criticism of Vančura’s novel The Last Judgement by Ferdinand Peroutka.