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Donbas in Contemporary Ukrainian Literature
Knappová, Alžběta ; Chlaňová, Tereza (advisor) ; Mokryk, Radomyr (referee)
The thesis deals with the image of Donbas as a unique topos in selected works of contemporary East Ukrainian writers. Throughout the last century, the symbolic value of the region, determined primarily by the peripheral character of the area and the dominant industrial nature of the landscape, has been shaped in Ukrainian culture. Nowadays, as a result of the social developments of the last decades, and especially due to the ongoing war, the forms of the symbolic geography of the region are substantially re-evaluated and updated. The first part of the thesis outlines the historical development of the region and the dominant myths and metaphors of the Donbas associated with it - these function as a backdrop for the examination of the current literature. The core of the thesis is the analysis of selected literary works of authors coming from this region; these are mainly the works of writers Vladimir Rafeyenko, Serhiy Zhadan and poet Lyuba Yakymchuk. The specific nature of the literature of the borderlands and the representation of collective memory serve as the interpretive frameworks. Against their background, the thesis examines the depicted forms of otherness, the relationship between the periphery and the centre, the symbolic construction of space and sites of memory, and the staging of memory...
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The Image of the City in the Early Formation of Jiří Kolář
Knappová, Alžběta ; Wiendl, Jan (advisor) ; Heczková, Libuše (referee)
This bachelor's thesis focuses on how Jiří Kolář depicts the city in his poems in the first half of the 1940s. As a member of Group 42 (known as Skupina 42 in Czech), Kolář was strongly influenced by its poetics. Disagreeing with the tendencies of art for art's sake in modern art, the group aimed to depict reality as truthfully as possible and to create art that would be of use to people and the society. The reality and the people were supposed to be shown without stylization. In particular, the artists' main focus was to portray the reality of the metropolis, because, according to Group 42, it was the natural environment for modern people. This thesis analyses the literary devices used by Kolář to depict the reality of the city and their development in time. The analysis relies on a broader theoretical framework of the poetics of the city in literature. It is shown that, when depicting his own experience with the city, Kolář uses features of the spoken mode and contrast. He connects those into elaborate structures as a reflection of the non-linear nature and complexity of reality. Kolář's city is not a background for action - it presents itself as a living organism, just like human life.
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