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Cultural Conflicts in the Writing of Hanif Kureishi
Dongresová, Marta ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Kolinská, Klára (referee)
The situation of immigrants in Britain has been inspiring writers for several decades and Hanif Kureishi is no exception. His own background allows him to describe the immigrant experience from the realistic perspective of an insider and his characters reflect the conflicts that immigrants have to deal with during their life among the members of the dominant culture of the state. The thesis focuses on The Buddha of Suburbia, while it also makes short digressions and touches upon a number of other works which were published by Kureishi from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, such as The Black Album, My Son the Fanatic, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Rainbow Sign and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. The whole discussion consists of three parts and begins with a chapter which primarily concentrates on important theoretical terms and their definitions that are necessary for all analyses of diasporic literatures; the terms and concepts are then applied to Kureishi's books and scripts. The second chapter deals with the conflicts experienced by the first generation immigrants who try to find out who they are as people as they oscillate between the culture of their country or origin and England, while the third chapter focuses on the second generation immigrants born in Britain who want to gain an identity in England...
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The Satanic Verses: In Quest of Identities
Poncarová, Petra ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Varhaníková, Halka (referee)
in English This thesis is concerned with the theme of identity in Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses, namely with the metamorphoses of identity in relation to space. The issue of space and identity comprises both the analysis of the concrete locations and their impact on human beings, but also broader topics such as the mass migration in the second half of the 20th century. The novel is (in)famous mainly for the charge of blasphemy that was brought against it, and for the international controversy that followed its publication, but this thesis tries to read the novel as a literary work of art, as a manifestation of free authorial imagination which nevertheless addresses many issues of great social and political relevance. The first chapter defines the scope of the thesis, its methods and main theoretical sources; the second begins the actual discussion of identity: how are identities presented at the beginning of the novel. This chapter also briefly introduces some theoretical attitudes to identity. The relation of identity to space is the topic of the third chapter. Salman Rushdie's writing in general is characterized by the author's deep interest in the transformations of human identity under the influence of migration, and in The Satanic Verses, this theme becomes both the formal and the...
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Differences in themes in selected works of Contemporary Multicultural British Fiction
Dobešová, Veronika ; Chalupský, Petr (advisor) ; Ženíšek, Jakub (referee)
The submitted bachelor thesis deals with postcolonialism, one of the movement within the contemporary British fiction literature. Firstly, the work describes the factual and historical background leading to the establishment of postcolonialism. Subsequently, its charasteric features are demonstrated on works of two postcolonial authors - Salman Rushdie and Hanif Kureishi. The bachelor thesis ends by the comparison of the two authors' points of view on selected themes. Key words: Contemporary British Fiction, Postcolonialism, Hybridity, Magic Realism, Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi
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Identity and Displacement in Contemporary Postcolonial Fiction
Olehlová, Markéta ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Franková, Milada (referee) ; Kolinská, Klára (referee)
English summary The main objective of this thesis is to present some key issues relevant for postcolonial field of study with respect to two basic areas of interest: concepts of identity and place, respectively displacement in contemporary postcolonial discourse and their reflection in fiction, too. The thesis should provide the potential reader with basic theoretical background based on the most fundamental sources and by means of selected literary works it should support (or disclaim, if necessary) conclusions reached by the most notable theories. This dissertation work consists of three major parts. In the introduction, apart from providing the motivational, theoretical and literary objectives of the thesis, I cover some basic difficulties that may occur when dealing with the postcolonial field of study. The central part of the thesis can be divided into two parts, each of them consisting of two further sections. The first one, "Identity in Postcolonial Discourse", is focused on one of the key terms in all of postcolonial theory: identity and other concepts related with it. I cover the basic development of theoretical reflection concerning this concept, drawing primarily from secondary sources dealing with it. The theoretical part on identity is succeeded by a chapter "Reflections of Identity in the...
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City as a fictional character in the postmodernist novel: Alexandria Quartet and The Moor's Last Sigh
Freimannová, Dominika ; Beran, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Clark, Colin Steele (referee)
in English This Bachelor thesis engages with the topic of a portrayal of the city in the postmodern novel which is then studied on the example of two chosen novels: Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell and The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. Both novels present the urban space as a female character with a strong influence upon the events and the formation of the protagonist's identity. The second chapter is dedicated to a theoretical framework which helps to establish what we can understand under the term modernist literature and it traces the basic features such a literature possesses. For this framework I adopted the study of postmodernism presented by the work of Linda Hutcheon, mostly her A Poetics of Postmodernism. A special attention is dedicated to the aspects of postmodernism that can be applied on the portrayal of space and the relationship existing between postmodernism and modernism. The third chapter outlines the basic concepts of space established by modernism. The major concepts dealt with in this thesis are: subjectivity, perspective, palimpsest and myth. As follows from the relationship between modernism and postmodernism, these concepts should be traceable also in postmodern fiction in a transformed state. According to Linda Hutcheon, the basic tool of this transformation is...
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Multicultural World in Zadie Smith's White Teeth/Multikulturní svět v románu Zadie Smith Bílé zuby
VANČURA, Jakub
Firstly, the thesis focuses on the overall context of contemporary Anglo-American post-colonial literature and in a brief enumeration it covers British and American writers from various ethnic groups, whose novels are currently the most widely read (Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie in Britain, Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan, Sandra Cisneros, Sherman Alexie in the USA). The core of this thesis is the analysis of Zadie Smith's novel White Teeth, its language and the overall multicultural context. The thesis includes the thematic aspects of the novel White Teeth (mixed marriages, skin colour, nurture of children from mixed families and different ethnic groups) and it focuses on the language and situational humour within the novel White Teeth.
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