In its first part, the thesis deals with Guy de Maupassant's life, the importance of short stories in his work, their reception in the French and Czech literary milieu as well as their uniqueness in the context of the literary movements of the 19th century. As a part of the thesis, an overview of the Czech translations of Guy de Maupassant's short stories is included. A separate chapter is devoted to their reception in the Czech literary context. The second empirical part focuses on the comparative critical analysis of the inital texts and their translations. The translations were chosen so that they could represent different generations of Czech translators (1902 - Pavel Projsa, 1960's - Luděk Kárl and Břetislav Štorm, 1990's - Dana Melanová). Here, the thesis deals with the skills of the translators to express the stylistic concisseness of Maupassant as well as the different stylistic levels of the original text (pathos and poetic language on one hand and informality on the other). In the conclusion, a final critical evaluation of the translations is given.