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Reality and Postmodernism in the Plays of Mark Ravenhill
Krejčí, Patrik ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee)
Thesis Abstract The thesis aims to explore how Mark Ravenhill's plays engage with postmodern themes and techniques, while tracking the development of associated experimental tendencies. This development cannot be accurately perceived chronologically, therefore what the thesis does instead is to group connected phenomena thematically, while making sure to stress the gradation that is perceptible over the course of Ravenhill's career. To achieve such a goal, several plays have been selected and arranged based on their focus and the level of experimentation present within them. The plays of principal importance are: Shopping and Fucking (1996), Some Explicit Polaroids (1999), Faust (Faust Is Dead) (1997), Handbag (1998), Mother Clap's Molly House (2001), Product (2005), Pool (No Water) (2006) and The Experiment (2010). The first three listed plays are not formally experimental themselves, yet they instead provide a sound theoretical background for the close reading of the remaining plays. This includes especially Ravenhill's treatment of the concept of postmodernity and its social impact. The analysis of the other, generally younger plays pursues the practical application of the insight gained in the introductory plays. Hence, what is theoretically implied at first is applied not only thematically, but...
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"A Ball of String Full of Knots": Narrative Strategies in Jeanette Winterson's Early Novels and Their Later Development
Krejčí, Patrik ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to describe the employment of narrative strategies in the novels of Jeanette Winterson with the focus on their development over time. The specific novels to be addressed are: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body, Art & Lies, Gut Symmetries and The PowerBook. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit serves as the thematic source for all the other texts, thus determining the sustained concentration on the issues of storytelling, time history. It also contains first narratological experiments, most notably the embedded narratives that are arguably the most crucial of the strategies Winterson utilizes, for they appear in some form in all of her novels. A significant contribution of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry is their historical setting, which accentuates the clash between fantasy (storytelling) and facts (history). Moreover, they introduce a second narrator in order to enrich the texts with an additional perspective and they use the ensuing duality of the narrators to problematize gender. In the last four novels, Winterson reaches the peak of her experimentation, since they take the themes of the previous novels even further, as if exploring what are the limits of storytelling. The complexity of the narrative structures has deepened,...
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