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The self versus the other: an exposition of an individual's condition in the technological society based on Anthony Burgess's novels A clockwork orange, M/F and The doctor is sick
Lauer, Martin ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
Based on the overall observations of human nature as presented in Burgess's novels the most accurate assumption seems to be that man is both biologically and culturally determined to live in a community. Seclusion is punished with coerced docility to the conventions of the society, as exhibited in A Clockwork Orange and in M/F, or with total rejection by the society in The Doctor is Sick. Freedom appears to be but an apparent, illusory creation of ideology to give the subject a sense of unlimited possibilities. Everything in the Burgessian world of fiction, even the most apparent manifestations of chaos are governed by some underlying structure, which, however cannot be decoded by the main characters. Burgess presents in his novels the condition of the individual, who is being unceasingly exposed to the pressure of the other and inevitably consents to conform to the social order and reinstates his body as a new entity with new relation to the world and social structures. The system, which originally appears as the hateful agency of the other, is finally constituted in the self. Technology, as an exteriorization of human mind, becomes a medium of this transition and as such offers a threat to the individuality of every human being. The loss of individuality, nevertheless, also marks the loss of plurality,...
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Shapes of writing in modern American poetry and art: Ashbery, Andre, Twombly
Hovorka, Jakub ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
The three artists/poets brought together by this thesis are radically different from one another not only in their vocations but also in their ways of writing and making. It is hard, and perhaps impossible, to unite them on a single plane. John Ashbery is a poet and his poetry as it is here presented in terms of its relation to Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art is one of disjunction, disorientation and dislocation, a space where relationships and orders are subjected to destruction and erasure. Carl Andre is a sculptor but also a poet whose works are characterized by repetition of basic materials and words in simple patterns, seemingly renouncing any creative role of the artist, and instead foregrounding the textures and shapes of things and words. Cy Twombly is a painter whose paintings and drawings employ writing and texts visually as shapes that carry meaning by their arrangement on paper or canvas. Unlike Andre and Ashbery, whose poetry is characteristic for materialism and impersonality, for being located in the present, Twomblys works distinguish themselves by classicism, romanticism and symbolism. Nevertheless, as I have tried to show, all three of these artists and poets take words and writing into close proximity of art, they re-conceive the process of writing poetry by analogizing it with...
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Joyce against theory
Vichnar, David ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee)
This work sets out to map the genealogy of a possible location of "Joyce" and "theory" in the present-day Joyce studies, and, equally important, to think of the meanings of the copulative conjunction and which separates/unites the two. The phenomenon of the contagious "Joyce and…" to be found in a plethora of book-, and even more so, paper-titles is significant in its own right, bespeaking as it does not so much a lack of imagination on the part of the scholarly community, as a central tendency of Joyce's writing, variously described as (all-) inclusiveness. Joyce's writing process, itself based on addition and expansion, produced texts whose semantic reference, more than in the case of any other writer, is extra-textual as much as intertextual, deferring its meaning to the lived experience of a specific historical reality no more than to other texts. This tendency, in turn, solicits a repetition in the response of Joyce's readership (from the project of textual annotation of the earliest to the complex genetic examinations of avant-textes of the contemporary Joycean scholarship), whether of the individual exegete, or- again, to a degree paralleled by no other writer-of a reading group. Joyce's texts, from the floating signifiers of "paralysis," "gnomon," and "simony" in the first paragraph of 'The Sisters'...
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Reflections of the deleuzian "time-image" in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and of Alain Resnais
Konoreva, Evguenia ; Armand, Louis (referee) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor)
During the twentieth century, cinematography matured into an independent and potent form of art. Film as a sequence of images caught in continuity presents a unique tool of capturing time; it allows the viewer to observe the manipulation of temporal and of spatial values, which before was not possible in the arts. Furthermore, the technical and aesthetic conceptualization of cinematography was evolutionarily developing during its short history and, according to Deleuze, saw a major break after Citizen Kane (1941)and most forcefully following the Second World War. This break resulted in the emergence of the so-called 'time-image', which in its essence reveals a radical alienation of the individual in contemporary society, but seeks to establish a new philosophy of space and time in a disorientated post-war world. The present analyses of the films chosen in this project aimed at revealing the new realities created by our two chosen film-makers. These realities echo the complexity and ambiguity of the contemporary individuality; these are the realities of a post-war subjectivity, one that is at one stroke both questioned and fragmented. Both Alain Resnais and Andrei Tarkovsky, whose bodies of work were conditioned by the emergence of a new post-modern consciousness, created a new cinematic style and also...
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(Post)Modern Inferno: Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman between modern and medieval netherworlds
Ruczaj, Maciej ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Armand, Louis (referee)
I have discussed earlier Noman's hallucinatory experience of "woodenness" spreading across his whole body - "a dry timber poison killing me" (119). It provides another stage in the consistently allegorical construction of the motif. Noman's moment of enlightenment, the possibility of the discovery of an allegorical meaning, is of course immediately distorted by the fact that Noman is already dead and - if his dwelling-place is hell - there is no possibility of further degradation, he is all "wood" by now. "Woodenness" he correctly associates with death, yet as always he misses the point as it is primarily a "spiritual" death that is signalized here.
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Edward W. Said: postcolonial studies and the politics of literary theory
Machátová, Bibiana ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
I first heard the name of Edward W. Said in a university seminar two years ago. His name was mentioned by one of my American teachers and not many of us knew who Edward Said was. After trying to find out who he was I was amazed that I had never heard about one of the most widely known and controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. I was very surprised that this influential author within the fields of literary theory, post-colonial and cultural studies is so little known within the Czech academic sphere. One of the most striking facts is that as of September 2007, there were only five entries by Said in the Czech National Library!. Similarly, only three of his brief essays were translated into Czech? Thus the purpose of this thesis is to grant appropriate attention to Edward W. Said and present an interpretive overview of his work which is necessary before one can begin to place Said in proper perspectives as the individual whom many have claimed as a centrally important twentieth century figure. It will explore Said's contribution to many disciplines ranging from literary theory and criticism to cultural history to postcolonial studies, as well as the literary, cultural, social, and aesthetic roles he has played as an academic intellectual. It will also attempt to interpret the key moments in...
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Dylan Thomas as a love poet
Mečířová, Eliška ; Armand, Louis (referee) ; Quinn, Justin (advisor)
The aim of the following BA thesis is to discuss and analyse the poetry of Dylan Thomas as love poetry. Thomas's relatively short literary career ended prematurely and the reception of his work was inconsistent from the very beginning. Some praised him as one of the best English poets and others condemned his poetry as empty rambling. Thomas led the life of a prototypical Bohemian poet and in his speech in Rome in 1947 he proclaimed about himself: "One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard; three: I am a lover of the human race, especially of women." Thomas's poems very much reflect his attitude, his love of life; the main themes they deal with are procreation, birth and death, sensuality, love and religion. Only a few of Thomas's poems do not contain the word "love", yet the range and the meanings of love are multiple in his work. Thomas includes the notion of love in all of his collections. His love for Wales and human race in general merges with his love for women and also for men, his love of God as well as the senses is reflected in his poetry.
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Giving a voice to the Other: Said's theory of anti-colonial resistance
Daghman, Ali ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee) ; Armand, Louis (advisor)
Compared to the detailed theoretical analysis of colonial power and discourse, the conception of anti-colonial resistance has been generally underdeveloped and undertheorised. This inadequate, theoretical concern with resistance to colonialism has lead to the current conception of colonial power and discourse in postcolonial theory. This argument is illustrated on the analysis of the approaches to resistance in the works of Foucault and Bhabha, who have paid the major attention to the issues of power, knowledge and colonialism. They are countered by the work of Edward Said who brings resistance to the focal point of the post- and anti-colonial discourse. Foucault argues that resistance is neither defined by terms of its object, nor is it the result of intentionality on the part of the subject, whether this subject is collective or individual. He thinks of power as an intentional question without a subject, as if he were talking about purposefulness without purpose or action without agency. Yet, Foucault's theory of resistance remains inadequately explored. For Foucault, resistance is not integral but rather a necessary condition for the operation of power. Power itself is viewed as an undifferentiated conception: he tends to think of power from the standpoint of its actual realisation, not the opposition to...
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Incompatibilities: the possibility of engagement in contemporary literary theory
Černovský, Pavel ; Procházka, Martin (referee) ; Armand, Louis (advisor)
To relate question of literature, or art in general, to any notion of engagement represents a number of problems. Probably the first is the problem, manifested in the development of the avant-garde, that engagement no matter how openly defined would nevertheless end in a subordination of art to politics, accompanied by politics usurping the right to define what is art. As Theda Shapiro in her account of the relation between politics and avant-garde art points out, at the beginning: "Many artists tacitly and somewhat naively assumed that, since art has been revolutionary before the Revolution, avant-garde artists would intuitively understand what was now needed and respond to the new economic and social situation."l However, this did not prove to be the case. To a certain surprise, the initial belief that "The fine phrase 'free, unpolitical art' is not meant for you"2 has not lead to a natural and spontaneous co-operation of artists and politicians. Instead, the claim of art being necessarily part of politics in a very wide sense was soon seen to be seized by the increasingly bureaucratic apparatus pursuing "ideological needs of the moment,"3 only to be in the end transformed into a doctrine by the "1932 proclamation of 'socialist realism' as the only officially accepted art form."4 To relate literature to...
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