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Romantic Impulses in Victorian Literature
Beran, Zdeněk ; Hilský, Martin (advisor) ; Mánek, Bohuslav (referee) ; Peprník, Michal (referee)
The thesis attempts to discuss the character of late Romantic literature and art as it developed in England throughout the Victorian period. It follows the assertion made by G. Hough that it is possible to identify a continuous presence of Romantic ideas and methods in the writings of some major Victorian authors, and reflects the fact that there was actually no consensus or prevailing unequivocal view of Romanticism at that time, as is evidenced in the contradicting statements of such writers as John Ruskin and Walter Pater. The first objective of the thesis is thus to define the characteristic features of English Romanticism as they can be tracked down in the formative period of the 18th century and the time of High Romanticism of the first decades of the following century, and to see what transforming changes these characteristics underwent during the Victorian era. The sources of Romantic sensibility are located in the revolutionary role of the scientific discoveries of the 17th century and a new focus of the philosophical writings of that period, concerning mainly operations of the human mind. This development resulted in new aesthetic conceptions based on the two prevailing approaches, empiricism and Neo-Platonism. These theories conditioned the main concern of Romantic thought, i.e. an...
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Romantic Impulses in Victorian Literature
Beran, Zdeněk ; Hilský, Martin (advisor) ; Mánek, Bohuslav (referee) ; Peprník, Michal (referee)
The thesis attempts to discuss the character of late Romantic literature and art as it developed in England throughout the Victorian period. It follows the assertion made by G. Hough that it is possible to identify a continuous presence of Romantic ideas and methods in the writings of some major Victorian authors, and reflects the fact that there was actually no consensus or prevailing unequivocal view of Romanticism at that time, as is evidenced in the contradicting statements of such writers as John Ruskin and Walter Pater. The first objective of the thesis is thus to define the characteristic features of English Romanticism as they can be tracked down in the formative period of the 18th century and the time of High Romanticism of the first decades of the following century, and to see what transforming changes these characteristics underwent during the Victorian era. The sources of Romantic sensibility are located in the revolutionary role of the scientific discoveries of the 17th century and a new focus of the philosophical writings of that period, concerning mainly operations of the human mind. This development resulted in new aesthetic conceptions based on the two prevailing approaches, empiricism and Neo-Platonism. These theories conditioned the main concern of Romantic thought, i.e. an...
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The Puzzle Novel
Stock, Richard Thomas ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Peprník, Michal (referee) ; Miller, J. Hillis (referee)
This dissertation is based on the claim that the study of the novel has not capitalized on the designation of the novel's unique properties by thinkers early in the twentieth century. My specific determination of the puzzle novel is in a sense merely one example of the kind of study that I see as necessary to further our understanding of both the novel and narrative. I see the effort of narratology in the twentieth century as a necessary project, but ultimately a failure at its own goals. Theory of the novel, meanwhile, seemed better poised to produce useful criticism in the 1930s, but since then has not had the influence on scholarship that it should have had. To deal with this lack, various philosophical works are discussed and used in the dissertation, especially those from Gilles Deleuze and Maurice Blanchot. Three novels are studied in detail as puzzle novels, and although the novels are chosen purposefully, they do not constitute a complete set: Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce, which I call the first puzzle novel in the terms of this study; Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973), the premier postmodern novel, and also an extreme puzzle novel; and Prisoner's Dilemma (1988) by Richard Powers, a puzzle novel that shows the true possibilities of the novel form. This study does not seek to make absolute...
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