|
|
Lord Byron's tragicomic muse: exploring the theme of stigmatization in Manfred, Cain and Heaven and Earth
Horová, Miroslava ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
The general public image of Lord Byron (in)famously amounts to a set of gilded platitudes - the Romantic sex-symbol, the lover of women, men, wine and freedom, the revolutionary suffering the premature death of a true hero - all adding up to constitute the notorious notion of a celebrity, anchored in the melodrama of an exotic life with a tragic end. In short, ever since the phenomenal success of the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, the poet has been distilled into a rather appetizing cocktail of hyperbole, originating in the theretofore unprecedented cult of personality epitomized by sheer stylishness and daunting eroticism. Thus in the long run, as far as the laity is concerned, we inevitably see Lord Byron join the catalogue of ill-famed idols featuring the disparate likes of John Wilmot or James Dean. Moreover, the scandalous momentum of the poet's life has continuously been pushing the oeuvre into a shameful shade, the consequence of which being that Byron's work is largely perceived as merely echoing, in fateful chimes, the biographical bane of incest, debauchery, intolerable cruelty in matrimony etcetera - the allegedly numerous moral trespasses eventually resulting in a dramatic fall from grace and exile. Stereotypes conjured out ofthe bog of Byron's life stifle the voices of...
|
|
|
The Ideal of Beauty in the Period of Romanticism
Páchová, Kateřina ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Horová, Miroslava (referee)
(in English): The aim of the thesis is to study the ideal of beauty in the period of Romanticism. The study is based on a close analysis of one of the crucial texts of the Romantic period - the Lyrical Ballads written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The thesis is concerned with the vision of the beautiful in relation to the aesthetics of the sublime. It focuses on the development of what was perceived as beautiful in the periods preceding Romanticism and how this vision changed for the Romantics. The question is what is the ideal of beauty in the period of Romanticism and how it is presented in the Lyrical Ballads? Is there a common ideal for Wordsworth and Coleridge, or do they differ in their notion of the beautiful? The main focus of the thesis is the discrepancy between the beautiful, on one hand, and the sublime or the grotesque, on the other, both in perceiving the nature and human beings. The Romantics have several similar features as well as the vision of the beautiful, whether they praise women or men or nature, whether they deal with the beauty inside or the surface. Similarities between those are considered as well. The reflexion of aesthetics of the beautiful and the sublime is drawn primarily from Edmund Burke's The Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas...
|
|
|
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet on Screen
Rösslerová, Eva ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Horová, Miroslava (referee)
THESIS ABSTRACT The aim of the thesis is to explore the film adaptations of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and to compare their thematic shifts of the adapted text. Primary focus will be put on Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968), Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), and Carlo Carlei's Romeo & Juliet (2013). This choice does not entirely exclude other adaptations, as they will be alluded to whenever some of their features become relevant to the discussion at hand. The thesis is based on my reading of this tragedy and supplemented by secondary sources. It analyses three themes of the play, and subsequent adaptation issues, in order to introduce and compare the individual directors' readings of these particular instances and their overall narrative strategies applied in the films. The impact of the various renditions of the themes will be compared and examined in terms of its influence on the audience's perception of the plot. Currently, many people experience Shakespeare's plays trough film and it is productive to examine what perceptions of the plays they form when encountering the playwright in this re-created manner. Some of the questions that this analysis will address are: What visual means do the directors employ to establish new dimension to the adapted text? What is transmitted...
|
|
|
Space and its connection to characters in Thomas Hardy's novels
Šejvlová, Kristýna ; Beran, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Horová, Miroslava (referee)
When preparing the first edition of his collected works, Thomas Hardy included his major novels in a group called "Novels of Character and Environment", which clearly indicates that he saw a fundamental link between people and the place they occupy. This thesis explores the connection between space, in this broader sense, and characters, and why the setting is of great importance to the story itself. For this purpose, I have chosen three novels by Thomas Hardy: Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native and Tess of the d'Urbervilles which I analyzed along with the places Hardy chose to determine the fates of his characters. This special determinism seems to lock characters in their fates, making it impossible for them to escape their social classes, the prejudices they stick to and the setting they are born (or borne) into, and how due to this concept of determinism some characters are destined to fail from the very beginning. This thesis consists of five parts. The Introduction and chapter about Hardy's fictional space Wessex, define what role space plays in the process of reading, and how Hardy exploits its features in modelling his own specific space. I have decided to list the novels in the chronological order in which they were published, since it mirrors Hardy's development both of...
|
|
|
'You Seemed the Goddess Incarnate': Echoes of Greek Mythology in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood
Netolická, Anna ; Horová, Miroslava (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
The thesis aims to analyse the echoes of chosen aspects of Greek mythology in Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, which are still being largely omitted by the academy. Mythological narrative in this work serves as a key to unravelling a variety of thematic layers of the book and offers new insight into the behaviour of the characters and their psychology, specifically concerning sexuality and gender as main topics of the book. The first chapter deals with concise contextualization of sexuality in the 20th century with a peek into ancient Greece. The second chapter focuses on juxtaposing the archetypes of gods with the characters of Nightwood. First it focuses on Robin Vote and her relationships that are contrasted to the myth of Demeter and Persephone, while discussion in greater detail is then dedicated to the union between Robin and Nora Flood, which reflects a subversive mother-daughter relationship dynamic. Further, the chapter explores the juxtaposition of deities and mythological characters that evince signs of gender fluidity - Tiresias and Agdistis - with Doctor Matthew O'Connor and Robin; the thesis will also touch upon a comparison to the gender-iconic deities Artemis and Aphroditos. The last chapter discusses metamorphoses, a phenomenon typical for Greek deities and mythological characters,...
|
|
|
A Variety of Perspectives: The Role of the Narrator in Selected British Dystopian Novels
Yavtushenko, Alona ; Poncarová, Petra Johana (advisor) ; Horová, Miroslava (referee)
This bachelor thesis focuses on examining the narrative situations in selected British dystopian novels and determining how the specific narrative strategies contribute to the texts' efficiency. The discussed novels are Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty- Four, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The study analyses the narrative situation in every novel separately, concentrating on the role of the narrator and their contribution to the presentation of the dystopian world. The thesis works with Gérard Genette's theory of narrative and his concept of focalization, using his terminology to describe the narrative mode in each of the novels. By examining the role of the narrators in the texts, the present study aims to determine how the chosen narrative techniques augment the depiction of the fictional worlds, thus making the novels more effective and relatable. Each of the novels was given their individual chapters in order to provide a detailed analysis of the narrative situations and determine how the particular type of narrator influences the way the text is perceived. In the introductory part, the genre of dystopia and its primary purpose are discussed. The chapter also introduces the theoretical framework and the primary texts. The second chapter is dedicated to...
|
|
|
Margaret Laurence's Women: Isolation and Survival in the Manawaka Sequence
Ondová, Zuzana ; Horová, Miroslava (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
This bachelor thesis examines the theme of isolation and survival in A Jest of God (1966) and The Fire-Dwellers (1969), the second and third novel in Margaret Laurence's Manawaka sequence, on the background of Margaret Atwood's book Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972). At a time when Canadian literature was a nebulous term, Atwood identified the notion of survival as the common, unifying theme in literary works produced by writers across the vast country, with victims, death, terror and isolation as the accompanying motifs. She defines the concept as multi-faceted, distinguishing the external/physical survival found in early Canadian explorer writing and the internal/psychological survival common in later fiction writers. Furthermore, based on the argument that as a colony, Canada is inherently victimized, she proposes a system of four Victim Positions into which we can categorize Canadian protagonists. Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) is considered one of the fundamental figures of the English- Canadian novel. In the Introduction I provide insight into the socio-cultural climate of the time period and the bleak state of Canadian publishing industry at the time. Since Laurence's works are tied to the Manitoba prairie, I touch on the significance of regionalism in understanding Canadian...
|
|
|
Tenants in the House of Language: English Romantic Authorship
Flanderová, Veronika ; Horová, Miroslava (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
The thesis examines the phenomenon of Romantic authorship as a conceptual tool of literary criticism. It compares the concept of Romantic authorship, in which the authorial personality plays a crucial role in determining the meaning of a literary work of art, and various positions of the author in relation to the meaning of their text in English Romantic literature itself. The introductory theoretical chapter develops the idea that the Romantic emphasis on the authorial subject and its primacy in interpretation of a work of art is, to a certain extent, a creation of late 19th - and 20th - century criticism. The thesis then examines the authorial position in Romantic thought and connects it with contemporary debates about language and the transfer of meaning between the subject and the outer world. The case study interprets selected poems by and the autobiography of Samuel T. Coleridge against the background of the debate on language and communication, presenting a number of authorial images in which centrality of the author's self for interpretation of a literary text is problematized.
|
|
| |
|
|
Journey Through Parallel Universes: The World of Portal Fantasy
Arzumanyan, Varditer ; Clark, Colin Steele (advisor) ; Horová, Miroslava (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to investigate the worlds of portal fantasy, a genre featuring travel between different realms, through the analysis of the selected novels. This subgenre of fantasy fiction enables a cultural and societal comparison between the character's world of origin and the newly discovered land. There is a process of habituation with the novel setting and one's self. The essay focuses on the worlds presented in the chosen literature, characters, and the role of the transitions through the universes. It facilitates a course of adjustment that inevitably leads to the development of the hero/heroine and offers an exploration of social issues. The thesis also examines the quest structure of the stories, as it is an element often present in the genre. Each book is summarized and examined within its respective chapter. The first segment deals with the definitions of the 'fantastic' and subsequently, portal fantasy. Consideration is given to the explanations of terms significant to the analysis as a frame of reference for the following chapters. It also discusses the process of building the Secondary universes. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman is the subject of the second chapter. Gaiman's prominence within the field of fantasy and his genre-bending writing opens up the chapter. The concept...
|
guest ::
