National Repository of Grey Literature 107 records found  beginprevious91 - 100next  jump to record: Search took 0.01 seconds. 
Samuel Beckett: the process of impoverishment in his theatre plays
Kmoníčková, Vendula ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
Samuel Beckett's early plays are usually regarded as part of the tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd, while his later plays are largely considered to be minimalist. As there is no direct relationship between these two styles, they have never been put into perspective. Nevertheless, Beckett's drama for the stage tends towards progressive reduction regarding a number of aspects of the plays, due to which minimalism in Beckett is a logical development of Absurdism. The Theatre of the Absurd, such as Waiting for Godot, already meant reduction when compared to traditional drama. As Martin Esslin described, it lacked developed characters, plot with development and suspense, and dialogue as a means of dialectic exchange. The works that followed intensify the process of impoverishment, leading to mere static poetic images. Plays like Not I and That Time are valid examples of literary minimalism as described by Enoch Brater, Ulysse Duthuit, Leo Bersani, or John Barth.
Gerald MacNamara and the Northern Revival
Diaz, Michael ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
English Abstract Nationalist movements often utilize aspects of mythology and history in their attempts to create a nationalist ideology. Through a selective emphasis and narrow interpretation of historical events, nationalist groups strive to create a national mythology. In this regard, the nationalist movements in fin de siècle Ireland are no different. This thesis attempts to show how the work of Gerald MacNamara, an Irish nationalist writing from Unionist Belfast during the periods of Revival and partition, was able to utilize the dramatic forms of parody and satire to create an oeuvre that critiqued both nationalist and unionist ideologies and nationalist movements as a whole.
John Millington Synge and Irish mythology - Deirdre of the sorrows
Pecovová, Petra ; Wallace, Clare (referee) ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor)
This thesis is focused on the relationship between the mythological tale of Deirdre and John Millington Synge's play Deirdre of the Sorrows. It concentrates primarily on features, such as characters, themes and motives, which distinguish Synge's Deirdre from the previous versions of the tale. The first part lists all the versions that are echoed in Synge's play, which include the 12th century version from the Book of Leinster, the medieval version from the Glenmasan Manuscript and the versions by Synge's fellow writers and dramatists from the Abbey Theatre. It briefly outlines similarities and contradictions between the earlier versions and Synge's approach. The second chapter deals with the role of fate, its representation in the different texts, and how it affects the central themes and motives in the tale. The last part of the thesis analyzes female protagonist and questions her role as a heroine. The aim of this work is primarily to show that portraying realism was essential to Synge, even when dealing with a legend that is comprised of the exact opposite. The most important passages of the thesis are those which uncover the conflicting representations of characters and motives, because they indicate that Synge's fusion of the heroic and peasant world was not successful. Even though he managed to...
Violence and formal challenge in the plays of Sarah Kane and Martin Crimp
Strnadová, Klára ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee) ; Wallace, Clare (advisor)
Both Crimp and Kane are genuine innovators of the dramatic form. The issues dealt with in their works are related; they share similar concerns about the dangers of nowadays' society - and, with it, theatre. This might not be apparent at first sight because of the divergence of styles. Crimp's style is language-centred, hyper-realistic at times, drawing a lot from the theatre of the absurd. He provides a characteristic mixture of satirical edge, ironic detachment and hidden threat. While Crimp works exclusively with the contemporary sensibility, Kane's proximity to the tradition of tragedy can be seen in what she employs in her plays - the big passions, "love, hate, death, revenge, suicide."1 Kane differs from both modernists and postmodernists by her refusal of detachment and by her requirement of emotional involvement. Both the playwright and her characters are absolutist, truth-seeking and provocative. Crimp prevents emotional identification even in the plays that at first sight seem realistic; in the experimental dramas, the distancing device of having stories narrated rather than just shown "allows Crimp to mix acerbic satire with rapid shifts of tone and focus,"2 asking intellectual questions in a convincingly dramatic form. The intense emotional content, which in Kane is delivered by the explicit,...
Shakespeare revisited: rewritings of Shakespeare in modern British drama
Rezková, Iva ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to analyze three recent British rewritings of William Shakespeare's tragedies - Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Edward Bond's Lear, and Sarah Kane's Blasted. The thesis attempts to trace parallels between the classical text and its modern transformation. Nevertheless, central to the study is the discussion of the reasons for dismantling Shakespeare's texts in order to compose own works of art out of their elements. The paper explores in what ways and to what purposes the three playwrights modernize Shakespeare and rewrite his tragedies. The analysis of the three modern plays based on Shakespeare is framed in a study of the shifting attitudes towards Shakespeare's plays and the changing patterns of their adaptations from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. As far as the development of approaches to Shakespeare's texts is concerned, the focus lies particularly on the late twentiethcentury phenomenon of rewriting classical texts in order to present a more updated and thus more accurate picture of contemporary reality and the current vision of human condition. Such a practice and such an approach to classical texts seem to be representative of Stoppard's, Bond's and Kane's plays.
Troubles on stage: theatrical representation of the conflict in Northern Ireland
Kristenová, Lenka ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
The objective of this thesis was to provide a detailed analysis of three modern Irish plays which share one common feature - the portrayal of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Apart from the common background of the Troubles, the plays focus on different aspects of the conflict which also demands different theatrical design. Furthermore, each play was analysed from three social perspectives - religion, gender and locale - in order to examine the ways in which these notions were influenced by the conflict as well as on the ways in which this influence is manifested on individual people. Attached to each play are short conclusions to their respective analyses. Despite their difference, the analyses of the plays also revealed several interesting similarities. Firstly, in the issue of gender, there is a certain discrepancy between the officially proclaimed and recognised division of gender roles and the reality of everyday life. Whereas officially the women are in an inferior position to men, and are expected to be an element of passivity, the three plays suggest that it is rather the men who represent passivity. The plays also point out how the position of men and women in society is further determined by the sectarian conflict. In all three plays, women prove to have stronger characters than men: in Tea in a...
Narrative strategies and the themes of Bildungsroman genre in Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes
Bindasová, Barbara ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee) ; Wallace, Clare (advisor)
The approach and use of Bildungsroman in the context of Irish contemporary literature is subject to lively development and invention on the behalf of the writers, thus offering an interesting and wide field of study for the literary criticism. This study of four representative works serves only as an introduction into the subject and does not, by far, cover the whole area. Nevertheless, Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, Seamus Deane's Reading in the Dark and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes manage to cover and demonstrate the variety and richness of this genre in Irish literature. Each of the writers tackles the subject with distinctive innovation, each picking a different theme as the centre of their respective novels.
Manipulation of children in the prose of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell
Linhart, Marek ; Clark, Colin Steele (referee) ; Wallace, Clare (advisor)
The focus of this thesis are two of the most prominent specimen of utopian literature, namely George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Despite the fact that Brave New World, which was published in 1932, predates Nineteen Eighty-Four by seventeen years and was written in a quite different social and political climate, both these books share many important elements. While depicting vastly different societies with diverse structures of power distribution, they both express certain fears and worries that their respective authors had about the future of civilisation, which is why they were chosen as primary texts for this thesis. More specifically, the main area of discourse is going to be the treatment of children and their relation to the state as depicted in these books. In this field, both Orwell's Oceania and Huxley's World State share the same objective, which is to turn children and the young generation in general into an obedient tool to be at the system's disposal. This aim is very prominent for many reasons in both books, but the results are the same; children willingly submit themselves fully to the state and become one of the major means the state possesses to achieve its goals. The degree of control over children both in Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty- Four is...
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's The brazen serpent: a contextual analysis
Skrbková, Alžběta ; Wallace, Clare (referee) ; Quinn, Justin (advisor)
Ní Chuilleanáin's collection The Brazen Serpent is fascinating on many levels and deserves a broad readership. However, due to the author's reputation for elusive and impenetrable poetry, the collection has not been as widely appreciated as it could have been had the readers been brave enough to flip and rotate the cover and dedicate to the collection the time and effort which the poems call for. The main dissuasion may seem to be the fact that the collection is deeply inspired by religious imagery and faith. However, in the analysis of the collection, it has been shown that although the poems are connected to the theme of religion, including topics such as nuns, the sacred versus the secular, saints and relics and other similar themes, there are many other layers of meaning which are hidden and have been excavated with the help of critical publications, interviews with the author and systematic close reading of the texts. This analysis of The Brazen Serpent, which incorporated biographical information, the Irish context, the feminine and feminist aspect, history - both personal and religious, aspires to be a useful tool for the better understanding of the rich symbolism contained in the poetry in its many layers of meaning. As was evident in the personal interview which I conducted with Ní Chuilleanáin,...
Words versus music: analysis of Samuel Beckett's "Words and Music", "Cascando" and "Rockbaby"
Fořtová, Linda ; Wallace, Clare (referee) ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor)
It was my endeavour to demonstrate the manifold capacities of music with (or emanating from) a text. Indeed, I have proved that music is able to express what words cannot, and that there are many links between the verbal language and that of music, and thus both can be used in an interplay as it can be perceived in Cascando where Voice merges with Music in harmony and their arrangement constitutes a fugue; or both elements can challenge each other in an effort to ascertain which of them should be taken as superior to the other, as in Words and Music; or, even, that language freed of the customary syntactic chains is able to produce rhytmical patterns in accordance to what the words describe, as it is in Rockaby.

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