|
|
The beginnigs of American feminism
Mergeščíková, Tamara ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
in English The objective of this thesis is to trace and depict the beginnings of feminist thought in America. Its aim is to show how feminist thought was developed within the Puritan/Protestant community as well as its effect on the African-Americans who were integrated into the Puritan community as an inferior race through the slave trade. The thesis uses qualitative and quantitative methods of research. A variety of primary and secondary material is used to describe the beliefs of the people in the era, such as the division of the male and female spheres of influence. The views of both men and women are provided to create a more objective description of the era and its beliefs. In addition, the subject is considered from the American point of view as well as the point of view of foreigners, such as the French historian and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville. Furthermore, feminism is depicted in various realms of the society - in literature, in the theatre, in the political and in the social life. The quantitative methods include statistical data on wages to prove women were not fairly treated in comparison to men, as well as data from the 1860 Census to prove the drastic effects of slavery upon African-American women and the immorality within the white society's marriage institution. The...
|
|
|
The Concept of Self-Definition: Emersonian Principles in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Native Son
Piňosová, Alžběta ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
The works of the nineteenth-century American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson continue to be inspiring particularly due to their empowering effect on the individual. It is especially Emerson's concepts of the sovereignty of the individual, the importance of self-definition, the view of life as a transitory flow, and the relationship between freedom and fate which can be practically and usefully applied in the life of an individual. It is possible, then, to understand and evaluate Emerson's works through the practical effects of his concepts, in other words through the prism of pragmatism. Emerson's empowering philosophy can be of use especially to disempowered groups such as African Americans. The Emersonian themes which are to be found in the works of various African-American non-fiction writers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cornel West testify to the relevance of Emerson for this minority group. In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Native Son, two African-American novels, Emersonian principles are shown to be of utmost importance for the positive development of the protagonists.
|
|
|
The Emersonian Pynchon
Naser, Safwan ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
Ralph Waldo Emerson and his postmodemist colleague Thomas Pynchon ... a seemingly incongruous connection. The aim of this thesis is to explore the unusual relationship between these prominent authors and advert to the great influence which Ralph Waldo Emerson unquestionably had not only on authors who were not separated from him by such a noticeable temporal abysm, but also a most recent author who, according to the vast majority of the definitions of the postmodern, should be entirely free of any Emersonian influence. This intricate relationship will be assessed mainly through Mason and Dixon, the most recent novel by Thomas Pynchon which reflects many aspects of what Emerson found absolutely central. The summation of what seems to be propounded throughout the entire novel is represented by the idea of determining boundaries, in both the literal and the abstract sense. Emerson himself devoted much attention to this subject matter and it is clear that Pynchon and Emerson have much in common from this perspective, which holds true to such an extent that the boundary between the postmodem and romantic is itself facing the pressure of redefinition, which is in turn a fundamental concept which both authors share.
|
|
|
The metaphysical detective story in Paul Auster's The New York trilogy and Thomas Pynchon's The crying of lot 49
Buršíková, Marika ; Robbins, David Lee (referee) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor)
While the first two chapters of the thesis provide the necessary theoretical framework concerning the classical detective story and the metaphysical detective story, in the third chapter this framework is employed to analyze the particular themes that are present in The New York Trilogy and The Crying of Lot 49. To explain the metaphysical detective story, a step back to the classical detective story as its predecessor is required. To sum up the oppositions expressed in criticism dealing with this subject, the contrast between these two genres has been defined in terms of high art and popular art (Todorov), art and kitsch (Holquist), ontological dominant and epistemological dominant (McHale), postmodern and positivistic mode of thinking (Spanos). The metaphysical detective story takes the conventions of the classical detective story and distorts them in order to betray the reader's expectations. Since the popular genres are constituted by their corresponding sets of conventions which need to be familiar, any change in them causes the work to lose its status as part of the genre. In this case, the classical detective story has served as a point of departure for many authors who transformed it into a completely different genre which had no longer anything to do with popular literature. Classical detective...
|
|
|
The theme of love in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved
Brzobohatá, Michaela ; Robbins, David Lee (referee) ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor)
Toni Morrison was born in 1931 as Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio. She studied at Howard University and later at Cornell. She worked as an English teacher, but in 1965 she became a senior editor at the Random House. Thanks to her, many African American works were published. As Henry Louis Gates observes, as a writer, Morrison was influenced by the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and by William Faulkner. Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. Sula was published in 1974, followed by Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved in 1987. In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, becoming the first African American woman to win the prize.1 Morrison continues to publish until the present day; her most recent works include Paradise, Love, and A Mercy. When putting Morrison's work into a wider context, we have to consider the difficulties of African American self-expression in literature. According to Barbara Christian, in the 1970s and 1980s, the time Morrison published most of her novels, African American women writers undertook an exploration of their history and community. They were finally able to express what the previous generations were not, as they were permitted to express themselves in limited ways, due to racism and sexism. Starting with...
|
|
|
Puritans and Indians - cultural conflict in the 17th century New England
Kašpárek, Jakub ; Procházka, Martin (referee) ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor)
As the first Anglo-Indian war in colonial New England, the Pequot War has proven to be the subject of extensive scholarly discussion and, what is more, controversy. If considered from a broader perspective, it is only recently that various reactions against racial intolerance in the U.S. triggered tendencies that have been gradually building up their share in renegotiations of the numerous misleading assumptions and stereotypes about the Indian-Puritan relations held over many generations. Such treatment of historical material holds true not only for the apologists, but revisionist scholars in particular and quite interestingly, however, even today both approaches still manifest a certain amount of need for negotiating the middle ground. Such statements are primarily based on, and to quote from many, the demonstrated extensive vilification of Indians and victimization of the Puritans, including the frequent dismissal of the Puritan aggressive attempts at renegotiations of indigenous cultural identities on part of the apologists. As for some of the revisionist approaches, their treatment of this historical material may also be considered flawed, based on their hesitance to examine in a more profound manner the Puritan mindset, which had been so heavily driving their actions, at the expense of explaining the...
|
|
|
Demetra Vaka-Brown as a representative of American orientalism in literature
Stránský, Rudolf ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Gheorghe, Manuela E. (referee)
This MA thesis is dedicated to the two fictional travel narratives Haremlik - Some Pages from the Life of Turkish Women (1909) and The Unveiled Ladies of Stamboul (1923) and to the person of their author, Demetra Vaka-Brown (1877 - 1946), the Istanbul-born American writer and journalist of Greek origin. Both books describe the radical changes which took place in the traditional Ottoman Turkish society between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of the First World War, as they are reflected in the everyday lives and attitudes of Turkish women. Based on Edward W. Said's definitions of Orientalism as a Western cultural and political attitude towards the Middle East and on other sources, the author of the MA thesis analyzes Vaka-Brown's authorial and narrative identities and attitudes to conclude that the two works of Demetra Vaka-Brown can be classified mostly as an example of an orientalist discourse, intentionally tinted with the so-called "cryptoethnic" pro-Greek political connotations.
|
|
|
Experiencing nature. Reading of R.W. Emerson's mythopoeia
Makelberge, Nina ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
According to theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "ideas look very different in the ripeness of their maturity than in the freshness of their birth"1; this observation is particularly pertinent to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, not only on the level of his own literary development, but also within the context of his evolving culture. Within the field of modern literary criticism and American cultural studies, the work of R.W. Emerson is primarily regarded and classfied as the prototype of the pragmatic theory. However, the over-emphasis of Emerson's forecasting of the American Pragmatism indeed overcasts the nascence of those very ideas which in their origin embody the idea of "transformation".
|
|
|
A dream shared: community and politics in selected 19th and 20th century American utopias
Kounovská, Kateřina ; Robbins, David Lee (referee) ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor)
The tendency to dream of a better tomorrow, a better society and a better world had existed long before utopian writing was defined by Sir. Thomas More in 1516. Utopian ideas are present all throughout history, from Greek and Roman literature, myths and mythology, various festivals or the "Cokaygne" utopias to religious paradise, the belief in infinite progress, utopian science fiction and finally the modern western utopia. This thesis will focus on four selected American literary utopias: Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887, Jack London's Iron Heel, Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. It seeks to analyze the social notions inherent in the four ideal utopian societies portrayed in these novels, the suggested process of social and historical change leading up to them and to note the development of selected social issues in the nineteenth and the twentieth century through the discussion of these works. The introduction will begin with a brief discussion of the background of utopian writing, include arguments for perceiving the institution of an artist as a cultural force, as well as include the historical and cultural background necessary for the discussion of the novels. Chapters two to five will deal with the proposed literature in a more concrete manner,...
|
|
|
Atheism in America
Koranda, David ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
This diploma work analyzes the contemporary rise of the number of atheists in the United States of America, basing this presupposition on numerous nation-wide surveys, primarily conducted by Gallup Poll and Pew Research Center. It goes into depth on the definition of atheism and strictly delineates the meaning of this word and the use of its alternatives in the work. Given the fact that the thesis is written by a Czech author, it also provides necessary background covering the differences between Czech atheism and American atheism. Since the work is purposely not one of literary analysis but rather of socio-political and cultural nature, reasons for this decision are given in a separate subchapter analyzing Flannery O'Connor's novel Wise Blood. History of atheism in America is touched upon in the beginning of Chapter 3, but since the fundamental focus of this work is on the contemporary state of affairs, the roots of modern atheism in America are sought after mainly in the twentieth century. In particular, the greatest causes of the weakening of church's power and the rise of secularism (or atheism, for that matter) are given as following: Madalyn Murray O'Hair's fights against church's influence in public schools and against its public funding; the argument about the non-scientific nature of belief...
|
guest ::
