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Struggles in Ken Kesey's novels One flew over the cuckoo's nest and Sometimes a great notion
Čížek, Filip ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to explore the theme of struggles in Ken Kesey's most acclaimed novels One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion. The two books were written only two years apart, and despite the major difference in form and style, I was struck by the amount of conflict around which they both revolve. The conflicts are very visible and explicit, they form the basis of the plots, they condition what kind of characters appear, and introduce the idea of various types of opposition. Being novels from the sixties written by an important countercultural figure, this is not all too surprising. The point I wish to illustrate, is that the characters' internal struggles hold at least as much importance as those that are exhibited on the outside. These internal strivings have a very essential nature, because they are struggles for identity, and also for survival, which leads me to believe the novels situate conflict at the very core of human existence. It is first necessary to clarify what exactly is understood by "struggles". Webster's Third New International Dictionary offers these definitions: the verb to struggle means "to make violent, strenuous, labored or convulsive exertions or efforts against difficult or forceful opposition or impending or constraining circumstances." The noun is...
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Boland, McGuckian and Groarke: nature and the self in three contemporary Irish women poets
Skálová, Alena ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
This thesis comprises historical and critical introduction to contemporary women's poetry in Ireland and close reading of three poets of its two latest generations, Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian and Vona Groarke. It focuses on her perception of nature and attitude to the relationship between the human self and natural processes and objects. The contextual background to my reading emphasizes the feminist critique of the traditional false images of the woman's self in Irish poetry and politics, and suggests new opportunities of the most recent female poetic voices. The culturally rooted simplifying or even harmful connection between femininity and the fertile land or Catholic ideals of virginity has provoked a lot of indignation among contemporary women poets, and caused abundant literary attempts of its re-negotiation. The authentic poetic representation of the woman's sexual and spiritual connection to the land and nature along with women's subjective use of nature imagery belongs to crucial points of this re-negotiation. It is pursued extensively in all of the poetesses discussed in this paper. My close reading considers the political objectives of the poems and notices different modes of their artistic response to the relevant cultural questions. Nevertheless, it emphasizes also the independence...
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Not Quite a Juggler of Identities: Joseph Brodsky's Translations within the American Literary Tradition
Tkacheva, Elena ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
This thesis discusses the difficulties in bringing Joseph Brodsky's poetry in English. It also attempts to locate Brodsky's poetry in relation to the multilingual American literary tradition by considering the factors that resulted in Brodsky being exceptionally successful in English, and the negative criticism of his translations and the original English poems. This research explores translation by considering the linguistic, literary and cultural factors involved in the transition of the poems from Russia (and Russian) to America (and English). It raises a set of broader issues connected with questioning the authority of the native speaker, the nature of the American literary tradition, and defining a good translation. Yet, it also considers the particularities of the literary niche of the exiled writers, the extend and the approaches to the transformations of English done by the authors-representatives of ethnic minorities, the appropriateness of Brodsky's manipulations with English and the connotations of certain elements of prosody in English and Russian. The thesis approaches the subject by discussing the difficulties of poetry translation specifically in the context of the Russian poetry translated into English with the main focus placed on Brodsky. It provides the overview of the debate around...
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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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20th century haiku in English
Roubíček, Jan ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Houskova, Mariana (referee)
For a reader or author residing in the West, the haiku journal scene is, owing to the Internet and to the many published printed journals, abundantly rich, and from the research we have done, we see that there is also a large number of authors in the English-speaking world who submit to these journals. The Internet also offers the option of blogspots, which some authors make use of; scholarly articles on haiku are readily accessible through journals and through other web pages. This situation allows for a dialogue, where the judgment about a haiku's quality is never simple. In the conclusion to this paper, we will sum up what we consider to be the important features of haiku, and we will discuss the prose-poetry dichotomy, as it seems to have relevance for haiku. The Japanese tradition still plays a crucial role in shaping modern haiku, as can be seen in the issues of Shamrock and elsewhere; there is a clear awareness, in the haiku community, that English is a different medium, with its rhythm and sound specifics, and that the same applies for other languages.
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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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Edward Thomas as a Critic
Zikmund, Jan ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Longley, Edna (referee)
1 Abstract Long overlooked, the poetry of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) has enjoyed wide recognition in the past few decades. The same cannot be said of Thomas's criticism. Though he worked as a literary journalist for almost a decade and a half, critics have mainly focused on the final years of his life when, after the outset of the First World War, he voluntarily enlisted in the Artist's Rifles and began writing poetry. He died in France, at the Battle of Arras. Since his youth, Thomas suffered from depression, possibly made worse by the demands of his profession (some years he reviewed over a hundred books). In contrast, the last stretch of his life seems to have been more fulfilling. Not only did military training prove beneficial for his mental health, but - encouraged by a number of his friends, including Robert Frost and W. H. Hudson - he metamorphosed from overworked hack-writer (as some still refer to him) to outstanding poet. As most of his criticism precedes his poetry, scholars usually look at Thomas's reviews, anthologies, and literary studies to better understand his 144 poems. While it is important to explore the links between his poetry and rest of his work, Thomas's criticism is strong and extensive enough to be considered independently of the poetry. His books and articles may illuminate his...
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A Curious Little Footnote": Footnotes as a Narrative Device in Contemporary American Fiction
Sirotenko, Alexandra ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
This thesis aims to explore how footnotes, used as a narrative device in contemporary US fiction, help address and challenge the global questions of authority, cultural power and historical narrative of the past. The work begins by outlining the footnotes' history of the use in academic writing and in 20th century fictional texts to examine their complex relationship with the main text and its authority in the past. It then establishes the context of globalization, within which the narrative of American cultural supremacy is the focal point, and maps some cultural shifts in the landscape within the country that were responsible for the changing perception of the historical narrative of the US. The last part examines the two works of fictions that are directly shaped by those cultural shifts - The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz and The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara - and analyzes the use of footnotes in those novels as instruments to destabilize narrative authority. The argument is made that through the use of footnotes these writers reflect on and challenge the historical power narrative of the US and its relationship to Others and othering.
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