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The Poetry and Journalism of James Fenton
Ward, Richard Douglas ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
This thesis analyses the work of the British poet and journalist James Fenton, with a particular focus on his work on Southeast Asia. I argue that Fenton's journalism represents an interesting experiment in personally inflected writing, akin to the New Journalism, and which shows a keen eye for the unusual. However, I suggest, following Benedict Anderson, that Fenton is at times motivated by a desire to create a marketable commodity rather than more serious journalistic concerns. I examine the relationship between Fenton's politics and his writing, arguing that Fenton's work on Vietnam narrates a growing but incomplete disillusionment with socialism, and that his writing on the Philippines shows a complete break, marked by the typical ex-believer's desire to distance himself from past commitments. In terms of Fenton's poetry on Southeast Asian topics, I track the shift from Fenton's early experiments in journalistic poetry to his later, more formally concerned work, arguing that this shift mirrors the change in his political convictions.
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Indie Rock Poetry: Arctic Monkeys' Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
Kiristaev, Michail ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
The following thesis creates an academic discourse in order to prove that the lyrics on Arctic Monkeys' debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006) should be considered as literature and referred to as indie-rock poetry. The argument in favor of the lyrics being literature is based on the theoretical framework proposed by Terry Eagleton, Stanley Fish and Anthony Easthope: literature is a construct, with literary value being impossible to identify in universal terms. Literary value exists within an interpretative medium, in the context of which the value can only be artificially assigned. To prove that Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not has literary value, the thesis functions as an interpretive medium within which the value is assigned. It begins by presenting Eagleton's and Fish's notions about the nature of literary value, supported by Easthope's idea of the denouncement of literary value as a concept. It is then supported by the notion of the vanishment of the split between high culture and popular culture, which makes the academic study of Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not possible, since it is an item of popular culture. The next chapter provides a sociocultural framework for the literary analysis of the lyrics in the later chapters. It introduces...
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Issues of translation in Miroslav Holub's poetry
Prunarová, Markéta ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
Miroslav Holub, the most translated of twentieth-century Czech poets, has an integral place in Anglophone literature, yet he has received little attention from Czech literary critics. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to shed light on questions that arise from this singular situation. First and foremost, in what ways and for what reasons has Holub's poetry become an integral part of the Anglophone tradition and what artistic features allowed its consolidation? This thesis explores the aspects of Holub's poems and of the cultural and political contexts that helped the positive reception of his work abroad. Since Holub's poetry engaged with the British and American literary tradition in its translated version, the main focus of this thesis is on the differences and similarities between the dynamics of Holub's oeuvre in the original and in English. The first part of the thesis introduces Holub's poetry from the Czech point of view. The genealogy of his work is outlined in its broader literary and social circumstances, especially within the context of the Poetry of the Everyday. To understand this context, a part of this chapter is dedicated to his biography. The core of the second chapter is the description of Holub's poetic language. This aims to determine whether such a language is suitable or...
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The Fragmentation of Identity in the Work of Sylvia Plath: The (Im)possibility of Escaping the "Bell Jar"
Urbanová, Aneta ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
This bachelor thesis deals with the theme of women's identity crisis in Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar and the selected poems from her late poetry collection Ariel, focusing predominantly on the portrayal of lost and fragmented identity. It establishes Plath's work within the context of her time and argues that the depicted issue of fragmentation does not merely concern a crisis of the individual, rather, it reflects a general sentiment shared by women in the Cold War Era. The objective of the thesis is to determine some of the principal causes of identity disintegration and show its detrimental impact on women's psyche. The analysis further aims to unfold the ways in which Plath's work offers an escape from the inner turmoil, and thus identify the potential resolution to the identity crisis. The thesis is divided into three separate chapters followed by a conclusion. The introductory chapter provides a general overview of the Cold War era, focusing on the changing political and socio-cultural situation of the 1950s and its role in the disintegration of women's identity. The overall purpose of the chapter is to demonstrate how the identity crisis presented in Plath's work mirrors the life experience of women in the Cold War era. It attempts to outline the oppressive nature of the post-war...
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Nomina nuda tenemus: Postmodernist Method in Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire
Ottová, Tereza ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
Thesis Abstract Vladimir Nabokov is usually regarded as one of the most important authors of postmodernism. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the method which Nabokov employs in Pale Fire and which earns it classification among postmodern novels. His approach to the text causes Pale Fire to be emblematic of Lyotard's incredulity toward metanarratives, Barthes' reservations to authorial figures and Eco's reinvention of flatus vocis. Nabokov's dialogue with the form results in a subversion of the formal elements of the novel. Pale Fire introduces at least one unreliable internal author, Charles Kinbote, who undermines and defies his authority as an academic commentator, which vastly contributes to the destabilisation of the novel's form. This combines with an anti-rationalistic approach to inscriptions and names which do not simplify the access to the content that they indicate, but rather complicate it. Even the first obvious subject of Pale Fire, that is the subject of the academic commentary, a poem "Pale Fire", has an unstable form as it cannot be determined whether the version as presented is a final one. Therefore, neither the narrative voice, nor the terminology, nor the main subject contribute to the stability of the novel's form, on the contrary, they disintegrate it. Similarly unconventional is...
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Getting the Picture: An Analysis of Narrative in E. L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel
Beňadiková, Jana ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
American novelist E. L. Doctorow proclaimed in his essay, "False Documents," that there is no fiction or nonfiction, only narrative. A similar notion can be discerned also in Doctorow's novelistic oeuvre, which articulates the author's meditations on narrative. This thesis analyzes the particular manifestation of Doctorow's meditative concern for narrativity within his 1971 novel, The Book of Daniel, inspired by the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The thesis argues that The Book of Daniel explores the role of narrativity in informing modes of thought and systems of interpretation of the world by deconstructing and drawing attention to the process of construing a narrative in an epistemological enquiry into its potential to impart knowledge, problematizing this notion simultaneously by exposing the inherent artificiality of every and any narrative stemming from the fact that it is always manipulated, and consciously construed a certain way. This exploration of the nature and role of narrativity is realized in the novel on the level of plot by the protagonist's epistemologically motivated deconstruction of the official historical account of the Cold War political trial of his executed parents and of other, alternative accounts surrounding the case. This deconstruction ultimately demonstrates that...
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Elusive Feminism: Gender Consciousness in the Poetry of Elizabeth Bishop
Tůmová, Šárka ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
This thesis explores the way Elizabeth Bishop grasps the themes and issues usually understood as feminist, both in her poetry and in her life. Bishop identified herself as a strong feminist, yet her feminism defies the conventional understanding of the doctrine prevalent at her time. Her conception of feminism is characteristic for its strong sense of egalitarianism, which reflects both in her poetry and in the way in which she wished to be perceived. Bishop avoids a distinctly feminist strategy and decisively refuses the potential bias in favor of feminine identity, should it be at the expense of gender-neutral worth of her work. Similarly, she firmly rejects the separatist tone of the type of feminism which prevailed during her lifetime and even discards it as thoroughly unfeminist. The thesis examines Bishop's conception of feminism from two points of view: Bishop's general interactions with feminist thoughts and ideas and how they reflect specifically in her poetry. The first chapter of the thesis focuses on the wider feminist framework. It serves as a necessary theoretical introduction to relevant feminist and gender theories, as well as a broader background for the understanding of Bishop's work with regard to feminism and feminist issues. This includes the general cultural context, but also...
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