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The victimization of women by men - "hunters" and "consumers" - in Margaret Atwood's novels The Edible Woman and Surfacing
Skřivanová, Martina ; Kolinská, Klára (advisor) ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee)
The thesis deals with the early works of the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood - novels The Edible Woman (1969) and Surfacing (1972). The thesis focuses on victimization and objectification of the female characters through photography and consumption. The two topics are crucial for the two "body" chapters of the thesis. The first chapter deals with Susan Sontag's and Roland Barthes' theory of photography, and applies it to both novels. With the help of a camera, the man takes control over the woman. Similarly to a gun, it is a device with a release one can easily press to overpower its subject and turn it into a trophy - an object in its unalterable position one can manipulate with easily. Therefore, the thesis also explores the parallels between female and animal victims and hunting. Roland Barthes in his Camera Lucida (1980) analyses posing in front of the photographer. He is convinced that at the moment of picture taking the person waiting for the pull of the trigger transforms themselves into an object and thus loses their real self - with this version of the portrayed person, the photographer can manipulate according to his will. The gaze of the camera is unscrupulous and predatory; the thesis elaborates on it by the feminist theory of Laura Mulvey, who in her anthology Visual and Other...
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The Czech translations of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist: A comparison of lexical means
Mitlenerová, Silvie ; Beran, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee)
This B. A. thesis attempts to compare the most important Czech translations of Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. The considered translations are the one by Emanuel Tilsch and Emanuela Tilschová (1966), the one by Arno Kraus (1952) and the one by Ladislav Vymětal (1930). In some cases, Božena Šimková's translation (1908) and the translation by Mary Dolejší (1926) are considered among others as well. The main criteria are lexical and stylistic means used by the characters of various social groups in their speech. The thesis also analyzes how the translators dealt with various registers of the Czech language from the highest, archaic ones to the substandard, dialectical and even argotic levels. At the end of the thesis, a question is raised to what extent the main translations in consideration have followed the general development of the Czech translation arts. Another question sorts out if time is already up for a new translation of Oliver Twist, or if the last Czech version still suits its readers properly.
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Towards the poetics of ceremony: a study in contemporary native American literature
Nagyová, Petra ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee)
English resumé ! The basic question behind my thesis Towards the Poetics of Ceremony is: How shall one treat contemporary Indian literature in the context of European culture? In a broad sense I deal with the question of reading and interpreting exotic ethnic literature in general. What is specific about Indian literature is the fact that Czech and other central European readers have usually had the opportunity to come in touch (however indirectly) with the Indian subject since childhood, both in the form of adventurous stories from Karl May and their successful film adaptations. ! And that is the problem: our concepts are twisted and biased, they are cultural stereotypes. In the Foreword to my thesis I call the process "stereotyping practice". On of the aims of my thesis is to show that for a fruitful interpretation of a work like Ceremony written by L.M. Silko it is necessary to look away from the stereotypes and deep-rooted concepts, to understand Indian authors in the context of the whole American literature and not seek any special categories or methods which would reveal "the Indianess" of the text. The American-versus-Indian question is dealt with in the Introduction. ! The solution I gradually offer in my work is based on a simple idea: the more points of view, the lesser danger of stereotyping...
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Putting Chopin and the Rez together: multicultural features of Tomson Highway's work
Marešová, Jana ; Kolinská, Klára (advisor) ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee)
The thesis titled Putting Chopin and the Rez Together: Multicultural Features in Tomson Highway's Work focuses on the work of renowned Native Canadian playwright, novelist, and musician Tomson Highway. The paper analyses those features of his writing and music that express the idea of multiculturalism and hybridity. It discusses the nature of the characters in his work and the image of the central character of Native mythology, the trickster. The analysis of dramatic techniques and music shows the way Highway combines his Euro-Canadian education and Native sensibility. Highway supports and promotes the notion of multiculturalism by his work. It has helped him to find personal as well as creative independence.
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Prejudice, Cultural Clash, Female Role, Nation and Nationaly in the Novels of Ying Chen
Navrátilová, Leona ; Kolinská, Klára (advisor) ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee)
Ying Chen is a Canadian writer of Chinese origin who writes in French. In her novels, she investigates immigration which is closely connected with displacement and the loss of one's original identity. Her literary work is primarily aimed at the North American readership so she includes a lot of details of historical events and social facts about China. Ying Chen belongs to the group of authors who are labelled as immigrant writers. The majority of her literary work centres around the recurring themes of nationalism, feminism, imagination and immigration, which can lead to a loss of original identity. Ying Chen investigates whether a person can exchange his identity, that which was given to him by his parents, with a new one. In her second published novel, L'Ingratitude, Ying Chen speaks through the character of the dominant mother and says: "A person without parents is miserable, like a people without history." With these words she indicates the impossibility of exchanging one's nationhood, national history, and identity. We need to accept who we are, and she emphasises this fact in her novel, Immobile, saying, "I am myself."
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Power through humour: Thomas King's strategies for decolonizing Canada
Tuček, Jaroslav ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee) ; Kolinská, Klára (advisor)
This dissertation is about power, humour and various comic and ironic strategies contemporary Native writers and artists apply in their works to challenge the outdated Indian stereotypes and obsolete systems of cultural and aesthetic representation. The artists employ a combination of comedy and irony as favoured modes of expression in order to contest, subvert and critically deconstruct the oppressive hegemonic ideologies and power structures still present in Canada and the United States. Their novels, poetry, essays, films, documentaries, theatre performances, paintings and other works of art strive to emphasize the marginalization and rights of all Native people in North America who have suffered over the hundreds of years of colonization, acculturation and violent cultural appropriation. In the last decade, there have been growing calls from academia, Native communities as well as the government, to reconceptualise the bi-cultural politics between the First Nation peoples and the Canadian nation-state. A great amount of models for an inclusionary and multifaceted identity politics have been proposed by several Canadian cultural analysts and critics, including for example Diana Brydon, Smaro Kamboureli, and Lily Cho. However, before they can be successfully implemented, a creation of an alternative space...
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Homegrown stereotyping: the shaping of Canadian consciousness through television broadcasting
Prosečová, Lenka ; Kolinská, Klára (advisor) ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee)
To define Canada and the Canadian nation is no easy task. From a historical perspective, Canada is a very young country: until 1949 there was no Canadian citizenship, the Canadian flag appeared as late as 1965, and it wasn't until 1967 that the Canadian national anthem could be heard. Although Canada would thereafter finally seem to have been able to establish its distinct identity in opposition to its mother country, Canadian patriotism has continued to be problematic. Despite years of efforts to form a pan-Canadian identity - characterized especially by Pierre Trudeau's attempts to institute federal bilingualism and a pan-Canadian identity rooted in liberal individualism - the existence of a self-conscious Canadian nation remains questionable. Within the Canadian Anglophone population there seems to be no unified notion of a panCanadian nation and thus no innate nationalism. Furthermore, for the rest of the world, Canada remains a mystery, an "Unknown Country."] Arthur Lismer, a member of the Group of Seven, assessed the situation as follows: "after 1919 most creative people, whether in painting, writing or music, began to have a guilty feeling that Canada was as yet unwritten, unpainted, unsung [ ... ],,2 Indeed, efforts were made to "capture" Canada in paintings, photography, in poetry and prose, in...
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A voice of one's own: the construction of identity and gender in Margaret Laurence's "Manawaka cycle" texts
Gybasová, Kristina ; Jindra, Miroslav (referee) ; Kolinská, Klára (advisor)
Margaret Laurence (1926-87) has been called "Canada's most successful novelist,"l "the most significant creative writer in Canadian literature,"2 as well as "the most renowned writer in Canadian literary history."3 A bearer of the distinguished Molson Prize, and of the Governor General Award twice,4 a Nobel Prize in Literature nominee in 1982,5 a receiver of a number of honorary doctorates from prestigious Canadian universities, and a Companion of the Order of Canada,6 she played a key role in establishing the canon of the newly emergent Canadian literature and placing it on the global literary map. As Kristjana Gunnars argues, Laurence "has been a founding mother of Canadian literature. She has given voice to the Manitoba prairie. She has raised the value of all sectors of society by showing the full humanity of the most neglected and forgotten among us. From her example, we have learned the value of Canadian literature and culture; the importance of art to that culture; the necessity of honesty in a dangerous time in history; the truth of fiction and poetry."?
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