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Motion in Faulkner: An Analysis of Movement in The Sound and the Fury
Hesová, Petra ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Matthews, John Thomas (referee)
The Gothic is an extremely viable mode in the history of American literature. As a genre concerned principally with distortions and aberrations, it provides a platform for writers to voice their concerns about periods of transformation and destabilized boundaries. William Faulkner, one of the leading authors of the American South, frequently employs the Gothic mode in his portrayals of the South as a traumatized region trying to cope with the echoes of the Civil War and with the disintegration of old aristocratic values, which manifests itself in the decay of institutions (such as the family) as well as a collapse of individual minds. This emphasis on the human psyche is evident especially in the novel The Sound and the Fury, whose main characters and narrators are representatives of the various extremities of the human psyche (severe mental retardation, suicidal tendencies, schizophrenia and paranoia). Faulkner's use of the Gothic mode is rather unorthodox and innovative, employing inversions and parody which can be appropriately demonstrated by the category of motion and his use of the traditional Gothic devices and character types. The traditional motion patterns - flight and pursuit, quest and purposeless wandering - that are originally connected predominantly with only one Gothic type (the...
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The Quest for Identity within the Reality of Plantation Memory in Eudora Welty's Short Fiction
Plicková, Michaela ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Matthews, John Thomas (referee)
The present MA thesis discusses Eudora Welty's short fiction and the author's engagement with the plantation memory. The introductory chapter defines the concept of plantation memory as a flux of the normative plantation binaries, the plantation mythology obscuring the ante-bellum Southern reality, the linguistic and phenomenal evidence of the prevailing oppression, and the ability of the text and its creator to subvert the official narratives and to liberate the individuals' silenced voices. Applying an interdisciplinary approach, the thesis examines the processes in which the particular selves are confronted with the plantation order and in which their identities are consolidated, either resisting or crumbling under the social pressure. The three analytical chapters of the thesis discuss nine of Welty's short stories that were selected from The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty on the basis of the typology and criteria outlined in the introduction. Without claiming that the nine stories present the sum of Welty's artistic achievement, the texts attempt to demonstrate general tendencies and narrative strategies that the author applies in her short fiction, writing about and within the plantation memory. The selection includes as many different texts as possible and contains three stories and three...
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Telling Community in William Faulkner's A Rose for Emily: A Case Study in Narrative Technique
Krtička, Filip ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Matthews, John Thomas (referee)
This MA thesis provides a close analysis of William Faulkner's most famous short story, "A Rose for Emily." The focus the thesis is motivated by what I take to be the central theme of the short story: community and its functioning. Shifting the focus from the main character to the narrator, I want to "rectify" the perception of the short story which owns its renown largely to its "shocking" or "gothic" aspect. The utilized methodology is chosen with respect to the proposed interpretation. The prism through which the text is approached is narratology. To account for the peculiar narrator of "A Rose for Emily," I use the narratological framework of "collective narrative" ("we narration"). Another important theoretical framework introduced in order to interpret the short story is the interdisciplinary concept of "collective memory." Some sociological conceptions of community are discussed. In the introductory chapter, I mainly discuss the concept of person in narrative and argue against the traditional distinction between first and third person narratives. In the second chapter, I provide an introduction to the technique of collective narrative. The third chapter provides a close reading of "A Rose for Emily" in the context of collective narrative. Firstly, I identify the narrator as essentially...
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Great Mothers: Female Empowerment in Selected Novels by Toni Morrison
Ioannou, Eleni ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Matthews, John Thomas (referee)
81 Abstract This thesis argues that motherhood as depicted in Toni Morrison's novels Song of Solomon, Beloved and A Mercy is a site of female empowerment. Its emancipating potential is set against the context of slavery and patriarchy found in the narratives and shows how mothers are able to resist oppressive structures and secure their children's well-being. Slavery practices severed family ties and caused its dismemberment by separating parents from their children. In the novels under study the recovery of those ties happens in an imaginative re-writing of history. Mother figures, such as Beloved's Sethe, come to terms with the re-embodiment of a painful familial past and deal with its traumatizing effects to be able to renounce it and move on. Others like Song of Solomon's Pilate cling to their past and act as mediators between the community's history and its descendants. A re-writing of history is urgent for African American writers and peoples who share slavery pasts, and who thus need to deal with their lasting legacies in the present. Motherhood is thus identified in several recurring patterns. Toni Morrison describes physical aspects of mothering from the point of view of the mother and uses the female body as a life-giving source that cancels the objectification of female slave bodies....
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Motion in Faulkner: An Analysis of Movement in The Sound and the Fury
Hesová, Petra ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Matthews, John Thomas (referee)
The Gothic is an extremely viable mode in the history of American literature. As a genre concerned principally with distortions and aberrations, it provides a platform for writers to voice their concerns about periods of transformation and destabilized boundaries. William Faulkner, one of the leading authors of the American South, frequently employs the Gothic mode in his portrayals of the South as a traumatized region trying to cope with the echoes of the Civil War and with the disintegration of old aristocratic values, which manifests itself in the decay of institutions (such as the family) as well as a collapse of individual minds. This emphasis on the human psyche is evident especially in the novel The Sound and the Fury, whose main characters and narrators are representatives of the various extremities of the human psyche (severe mental retardation, suicidal tendencies, schizophrenia and paranoia). Faulkner's use of the Gothic mode is rather unorthodox and innovative, employing inversions and parody which can be appropriately demonstrated by the category of motion and his use of the traditional Gothic devices and character types. The traditional motion patterns - flight and pursuit, quest and purposeless wandering - that are originally connected predominantly with only one Gothic type (the...
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