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The aesthetics and short prose of D. H. Lawrence
Štefl, Martin ; Hilský, Martin (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
The thesis presents an analysis of the selected themes of D. H. Lawrence's aesthetics and philosophy in relation to his short stories. The main focus of the presented argument is the notion of language (Chapter 2), knowledge (Chapter 3) and the Self (Chapter 4). These chapters form and constitute a coherent thematic unity of the Lawrentian "triptych". The above mentioned phenomena are demonstrated to form the foundation of Lawrence's aesthetical and philosophical thought as it is put into practice in his short fiction. The argument aims to introduce these as applied and integrated in the substance of Lawrence's shortest prose. The structure of the thesis is based on a concept in which the next chapter develops and relies on the previous one chapter, while extending and augmenting the original argument. In addition to this, all of the three notions are unified under the key concept of Lawrence's philosophy, i.e. the notion or the theory of the "idea" and "idealism". The discussion of these three phenomena is followed by a brief appendix chapter (Chapter 5). This chapter does not add any new topic, however, supplies the text and deepens the existing argument with what might be understood as a diachronic supplement and summary of an otherwise prevailingly synchronic study. Key Words: D. H. Lawrence,...
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Comedic elements in Shakespere's tragedies
Severinová, Klára ; Nováková, Soňa (referee) ; Hilský, Martin (advisor)
The aim of the thesis is to discuss the comedic elements in Shakespeare's five tragedies, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear. The Introduction presents the elements which I will try to cover in each of the play. Since the treatment of the elements is different play from play, its extent will differ accordingly. I would like to emphasize the existence of the comedy within the genre of tragedy and thus point out on the style which made Shakespeare a well read playwright for over centuries.
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Japan in the novels of the British writer Kazuo Ishiguro
Kráľová, Martina ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee) ; Hilský, Martin (advisor)
As we have seen, the fact that Japanese culture plays an important role in all three of Ishiguro's early novels appears to be virtually incontestable. In the first two novels, Japan is present not only on the obvious level of setting and characters. Ishiguro employs and simultaneously subverts the Western stereotypes about Japan, like the notion of obedient Japanese women, or the myth about the Japanese propensity to suicide. The novels also share a controlled and almost minimalist style of narration, which shows distinct traces of the Japanese cinema of the 1950's and of the Japanese aesthetic concept of mono no aware. Moreover, Ishiguro cleverly manipulates the speech of his characters and makes the Japanese language filter through the perfect English diction. As for The Remains of the Day, a critical perspective, which views this novel as purely English without any relation to the Oriental culture, provides enough means to cover the novel to a satisfying degree. However, if the reader has a chance to take into account the Japanese background of the author and the context of Japanese culture, he may discover Oriental elements at the very heart of butler Stevens: in his motives, in his conduct, in his understanding of his vocation and in his view of his position in the context of humanity. Such a reader...
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Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story - the novel and its adaptation
Jestřábová, Iva ; Hilský, Martin (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
My thesis is focused on Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and its first ever film adaptation Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story directed by Michael Winterbottom. I concentrate primarily on the specificities of literary and cinematic language and the way the film transforms literary methods into cinematic ones. In the first part I outline the director's previous work with special emphasis on adaptation and summarize some of the theoretical aspects of adaptation in general. I then concentrate on specific aspects of the novel, such as its genre, structure and characters, and analyze the methods by which they were used and transformed in the film. I also pose the question if the modernist and postmodern aspects of the novel are also applicable to its adaptation. In the last part of my thesis I analyze some of the central themes of the novel and the film, such as humour, sexuality or sentiment. The aim of my work was primarily to find out if the adaptation of this notoriously 'unfilmable' novel was successful and what methods it uses to tackle the original text. The most important passages of the thesis, therefore, are those which uncover the adaptational processes and their application in the film. During the course of the work, many parallels between the novel and...
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Relationships of the principal characters of Graham Greene's selected "Catholic" novels (Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The Heart of the Matter) to themselves, other characters and God with respect to the general features of Greene's novels and their typical protagonists
Fabián, Erik ; Hilský, Martin (referee) ; Beran, Zdeněk (advisor)
The novels of Graham Greene have been of great interest to many literary scholars for years and are even nowadays. For their provocativeness in the broadest sense of this word, they have been either praised and recommended (even by the author himself) or condemned and censured. Nevertheless, his works in general have gained popularity of readers from all over the world (not excluding the Czech Republic) probably thanks to Greene's captivating style of writing and the themes with which he is concerned. Therefore, it appears to be important to examine the writings of an author who was even nominated for a Nobel Prize, for such discussion may raise interesting problems or give answers to yet unanswered questions. Understandably, it would be impossible to cover all Greene's novels in a greater depth in this thesis. For the present analysis, three of his four "Catholic novels" have been selected: Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. The main aim of this thesis is to provide a deeper analysis of the selected novels. As relationships of the central characters to themselves, other characters and God help to demonstrate the themes and motifs which Greene presents in the given novels, they will be examined. Further, it will be shown on particular examples in what way these protagonists...
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Beyond words: visual aspects in the work of Virginia Woolf
Šilpochová, Michaela ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee) ; Hilský, Martin (advisor)
Throughout her career Woolf was captivated by questions about the relationship between literature and painting, word and image. Her intense interest in the field of the visual arts was reflected in her development of a new literary method. Woolf's use of the visual arts in her writing largely transcends a mere decorative function. Her employment in her texts of visuality represents a significant stylistic innovation by means of which she rejects the conventional way of depicting reality and the descriptive realism of the nineteenth- century writers. In attempt to develop a modern way of writing, which would render reality more in accord with the modern sensibility, she employed in her texts principles underlying the contemporary theory and practice in the visual arts relying particularly on the aesthetics of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The principles of these two styles exist side by side and complement each other even in Woolf's later works which have been considered as predominantly post-impressionist. The objectives of Post- Impressionist art became known to Woolf through the theories of Roger Fry which turned out to be a major formative influence in the shift towards her new aesthetics.
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The image of the city in contemporary British literature. The city in the works of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan
Chalupský, Petr ; Hilský, Martin (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee) ; Grmela, Josef (referee)
The city and its milieu have always been a source of inspiration and motifs for artists and writers are no exception. The process of urbanization brought along rapid social, political, cultural and economic changes which evoked immediate responses of various kinds, from welcoming and celebrating ones to those of rejection and condemnation, from those who were traditionally the most sensitive about such phenomena ~ men of letters. As a result of this fact, the image of the city has been present in literature since the first urban societies appeared and to trace it back in detail would mean a different aim from that which this work is going to follow. The main concern of my thesis is contemporary British literature and therefore I would like to focus on how the city is reflected in the works of British writers in the last two decades of the twentieth century. To provide certain general coherence, continuity and context of the theme, I will also put down a brief outline of how the image of the city has been developing and changing in English literature since the late Victorian period trying to show that the phenomenon is very deep-rooted in the tradition of the English imagination. If we should mention the most notable contemporary British writers whose works are set in cities or in some other way depict the...
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Aldous Huxley's early novels of ideas: from Crome Yellow to Those Barren Leaves
Renner, Luboš ; Hilský, Martin (referee) ; Procházka, Martin (advisor)
The literary reputation of Aldous Huxley, the novelist, has scarcely ever been as good as that of Aldous Huxley, the essayist. In fact, as some critics claim, Huxley's novels have the crucial flaw of not being proper novels at all - they are (the critics say) 1 actually essays, some of them more skillfully dramatized than others. Whether the novels really suffer from their essayistic quality is a question to be answered by the reader; certain it is, though, that mixing the two genres, the novel and the essay, was Huxley's intention: As he once acknowledged in an interview, his aim as a novelist was ~to arrive, technically, at a perfect fusion of the novel and the essay"z. What are the main features of a Huxleyan essayistic novel? First , it is scarcity of plo t. In most Huxley' s novels nothing ever happens: people come and go, they meet and part, they (try to) make love, and - most importantly - they talk. This is, of course, true especially of Huxley's early conversation novels, a late novel like Ap e and E s s en c e probably being the most noticeable exception. Another aspect of the essayistic novel follows on the first. The scarce plot does not lead to any overall des i g n ; the novels end, as it were, in the middle of 'action'; there seems to be no single 'message' to be arrived at. Again, this...
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Concepts of harmony in five metaphysical poets
Jajtner, Tomáš ; Hilský, Martin (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee) ; Mánek, Bohuslav (referee)
My interest in metaphysical poetry has always been tainted with a sense of amazement and awe: the poetry of the School of Donne, indeed, poses fundamental questions about the nature of modem poetry and the mission of a poet within a disenchanted world. The slow abandonment of the old Pythagorean system of ham1onious spheres rotating around a stable earth and the acceptance of the heliocentric Copernican-Keplerean universe marked a true "breaking of the circle of perfection''- to use the term of Marjorie Nicholson - and entailed a complex breach in the nature of representational arts. The old cosmology depicted the universe as truly universa!, i.e. turning around a single axis, a single principle, or a clearly defined centre. The order of creation was granted by the gradual chain of being, uniting the lowest with the highest in a scale of perfection. The nature of representational arts was, primarily, to re-present the order of creation: i.e. finding a means of transfer between the static order of universe and human understanding. Classical Renaissance literary theory - in fact, inherited from Antiquity - emphasised that poetry as the art of making was to "teach and delight": its delightfulness had to be firmly bound with instruction and initiation into to the order of harmonious cosmos. Indeed, Sidney...
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The image of the city in contemporary British literature. The city in the works of Martin Amis and Ian McEwan
Chalupský, Petr ; Hilský, Martin (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee) ; Grmela, Josef (referee)
The city and its milieu have always been a source of inspiration and motifs for artists and writers are no exception. The process of urbanization brought along rapid social, political, cultural and economic changes which evoked immediate responses of various kinds, from welcoming and celebrating ones to those of rejection and condemnation, from those who were traditionally the most sensitive about such phenomena ~ men of letters. As a result of this fact, the image of the city has been present in literature since the first urban societies appeared and to trace it back in detail would mean a different aim from that which this work is going to follow. The main concern of my thesis is contemporary British literature and therefore I would like to focus on how the city is reflected in the works of British writers in the last two decades of the twentieth century. To provide certain general coherence, continuity and context of the theme, I will also put down a brief outline of how the image of the city has been developing and changing in English literature since the late Victorian period trying to show that the phenomenon is very deep-rooted in the tradition of the English imagination. If we should mention the most notable contemporary British writers whose works are set in cities or in some other way depict the...
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