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Emily Dickinson's Subversion of the Puritan Tradition
Johnsonová, Natalie Emma ; Machová, Mariana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
Emily Dickinson grew up in a religious community where the influence of New England Puritanism was still present. Despite being raised as a practicing church member, she later chose not to formally join the Church. She was, nevertheless, continually in contact with religious discourse and struggled with her relationship to the divine; where the Church saw certainties, she saw questions. This is reflected in her poetry, which engages with religious themes, ponders on the possibilities of the afterlife and expresses doubts about the true nature of God. In this thesis, her life and poetry are analysed through the lens of the Puritan tradition of New England. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapters one and two focus on the historical-cultural contexts. The first chapter summarises American Puritanism, the Puritan worldview and its continuous presence in New England, drawing mostly from the works of Perry Miller and Sacvan Bercovitch. The second chapter focuses on Emily Dickinson's life and her interactions with the Puritan tradition. This chapter analyses Dickinson's life, with emphasis on different moments when she came into contact with the Puritan heritage, and it discusses some critical approaches to Dickinson's poetry, which deal with her rendering of the Puritan heritage. This summary...
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"I Am a Garden of Black and Red Agonies": The Image of Maternity in Sylvia Plath's Poetry
Zakutná, Simona ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Machová, Mariana (referee)
This diploma thesis deals with the theme of motherhood in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. The main objective of the thesis is to explore how pregnancy, childlessness, and motherhood are understood by Plath in her poetry. I show how she transposed her thoughts and experiences of maternity into it and identify the main influencing outside factors. The poetry will be studied and read from a biographical, sociocultural, and feminist standpoint. Studies of motherhood and domesticity in the United States, predominantly by Betty Friedan and Glenna Matthews, will be analyzed in order to offer a general context within which Plath created her poetry and to demonstrate how she contested the idealized perception of motherhood at the time. To understand women's writing in a male-dominated literary canon and the ways in which Plath fought back against the language and archetypes imposed on her, demystifying motherhood in the process, feminist literary studies, predominantly The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar will be consulted. The thesis will consist of four chapters: the first chapter will deal with biographical occurrences in Plath's life, covering known life events recorded in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and Letters Home relevant to the topic at hand. The second chapter will...
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Black American Dream as a Clash of Principles: Representations of the American Dream in Black American Political Poetry
Bularzová, Kristýna ; Machová, Mariana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
Kristýna Bularzová MA thesis 1 Abstract The MA thesis will focus on the representations of the concept of the American dream in Black1 American poetry. From its origins in the Declaration of Independence (in the "pursuit of happiness") the concept of the American dream has been seen as problematic, with the idea of an "unalienable right" clashing with its being mutable and fleeting and potentially out of reach. The main goal of the thesis is to demonstrate that the American dream has been present in the works of Black American poets as a potent, yet schizophrenic concept (with reference to Martin Luther King's idea of "American schizophrenic personality) for decades, and possibly centuries, and its central ambiguity and the clash of principles has remained essentially the same, only the representations vary. Analyzing poems by Black poets from the 20th century, the thesis will explore the concept of the Black American dream as a myth to which, as James Baldwin put it, "we are clinging [and] which has nothing to do with the lives we lead." The thesis is divided into two parts, incorporating not only the poetic perspective on the matter, but also the ideas on the topic by key African American thinkers from different historical periods (such as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, or Martin Luther King Jr.)....
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Deviancy of Morality and Self: Egotism and Brutality against the example of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian
Leštachová, Barbora ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Machová, Mariana (referee)
THESIS ABSTRACT The Southern Gothic genre is most profoundly known for its explicit display of extreme violence, brutality, and sinister characters. This thesis offers a comprehensive analysis of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed novel, Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West, examining its relevance to diverse gothic sub-genres and exploring the moral perspective that permeates the narrative. The primary focus of this thesis is to examine the enigmatic character of Judge Holden, seeking to understand the factors that shape his personality and how literary critics have perceived him since the novel's publication. The opening chapter provides a broad overview of the various genres and sub-genres of gothic literature associated with McCarthy's works. It then narrows its focus to Blood Meridian and identifies the genres that critics have most commonly linked to the novel. Specifically delving into Blood Meridian, the first chapter further explores the satanical and theological aspects of Judge Holden's character. It introduces the genre, the novel, and the initial interpretation of the judge as a figure akin to Satan. While this is a conventional classification, it warrants further examination in the broader context of his persona. The second chapter approaches the analysis from a moral standpoint,...
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Imagism, Imagists and Imagery: Ezra Pound, H.D. and William Carlos Williams
Pavienská, Anna ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Machová, Mariana (referee)
Imagism, almost parallel with the first World War, was an American poetry movement applying free verse, using an "Image" which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant, and accenting the meaning of each word, moving the opposite direction from Romanticism and towards to Modernism, as its sub-genre. The goal of this thesis is to compare and analyze some of the most notable works of the most eminent poets and founders of the Imagism movement: Ezra Pound, H.D., Richard Aldington, F. S. Flint, and William Carlos Williams, and to evaluate the main characteristics of the movement itself. This thesis will define the three most prominent stylistic tendencies of Imagism and illustrate said features in the work of each of the poets. The analysis of each poet's work will serve as material for a demonstration of the most notable characteristics of this literary movement. The first feature of Imagist poetry, direct treatment of the "thing," will be represented by William Carlos Williams, alongside sharp imagery, highlighted in his collection Spring and All and Sour Grapes including the poems "By the Road to the Contagious Hospital," "The Red Wheelbarrow," "The Great Figure" and "This is Just to Say." The second characteristic, to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the...
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"Silence into Language and Action": Political Poetry of Audre Lorde
Stará, Barbora ; Machová, Mariana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
In her work, Audre Lorde rebels against the white male oppressors through her intimate confessions and bold imagery. Both her poetry and her prose call for justice across society. She claims her Black, lesbian, and feminist identity as she comments on the inequalities and oppression faced by the marginalised groups and formulates thoughts of and reasons for intersectional activism. Given her multi-layered identity, Lorde is able to acknowledge the multiplicity and interconnectedness of oppression and discrimination in American society. In her book of essays Sister Outsider, she presents her key thoughts on discrimination, oppression, and liberation. Lorde's poems reflect the American reality as they serve as testimonies of the struggles of Black Americans, women, and queer people. This thesis closely examines three of Audre Lorde's most famous poems, namely "A Litany for Survival," "Afterimages," and "Power" in the context of her ideas on poetry as an activist tool. To offer a framework for the reading, the opening chapter of the thesis is dedicated to delineating the historical-political context of the time of Lorde's life and work, as well as the context of the genre of political poetry and poetry of witness. Lorde proposes her understanding of poetry as an illuminative and transformative power...
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Shaping the American National Identity: Reality and Myth of the Western Frontier
Biben, Valeriya ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Machová, Mariana (referee)
The territorial expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century caused major political, social and cultural changes within the American nation. In 1893, American historian Frederick Jackson Turner put forward the idea that the American frontier gave rise to the establishment of the most salient features of American national identity - individualism, exceptionalism, self-reliance, and the emergence of American democratic order. But despite its enormous impact on the following generations of historians, Turner's thesis overlooked a number of historical facts and impacts of the Frontier that could potentially undermine his statement, namely the indigenous genocide and devastation of the natural environment. His essay thus formulated the myth of the West, as it largely represented the American's imagination of the frontier and its experiences. This thesis examines the relation between the history of the United States' territorial expansion and its mythologic representation, focusing on the political and cultural dynamics of the nineteenth- century America. It presents a close analysis of the frontier mythology and the Manifest Destiny ideology, and their impact on the formation of American national identity. The thesis is divided into three chapters composed of further subchapters. The first...
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Elizabeth Bishop: Translation as Poetics
Machová, Mariana ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Hilský, Martin (referee) ; Costello, Bonnie (referee)
The dissertation thesis is based on the concept of translation as an aesthetic stance not limited to translating from one language to another, but informing a certain type of original creation. In order to speak about this aesthetic stance which shares some of its features, methods and values with those often found in the work of a translator the term "translation poetics" is proposed. The American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) is presented and examined as a representative of this poetic type. A study of her lifetime work as a translator creates a context and background for the formulation of the basic characteristics of Bishop's "translation poetics", and, consequently, for the reading of her poems. The detailed chronological examination of all her translations (from Ancient Greek, French, Portuguese and Spanish) is followed by an outline of the main poetic principles which lie both behind translation and the original creation, and these are exemplified by detailed close-readings of a selection of Bishop's poems. The key features of Bishop's "translation poetics" (the interest meetings and borders; tensions between domination and submission, and between the insider and the outsider position; sensitivity towards the plurality of voices and of perspectives; a stress on dialogue and interaction;...
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