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The Search for Meaning in Donald Barthelme's Work
Kupková, Tatiana ; Vichnar, David (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
The Search for Meaning in Donald Barthelme's Work Abstract Donald Barthelme is known for his fragmentary, disjointed and collage-like narratives centred around bizarre and surreal situations. Mostly associated with the American metafictional tradition prominent from the 1960s, Barthelme's work is often self-conscious, aware of its own status as fiction, examining not only the boundaries between different ontological levels of fiction and reality, but also questioning the boundaries between meaning and its absence and subsequently contemplating the status of the literary work itself. Focusing primarily on the short stories from his collections Sixty Stories (1981), Forty Stories (1987) and the novels Snow White (1967) and The Dead Father (1975), the aim of the thesis is to examine three different levels of Barthelme's texts which are concerned with meaning or its absence. On the level of content, Barthelme's characters often search for a meaning and try to interpret the fragmentary, often absurd and surreal experience they are confronted with. The intentionally awkward language often saturated with clichés seems to be deteriorating and losing its referential quality. The characters, unable to interpret signs and to find meaning in the fragmentary experience, find themselves feeling the sense of...
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Mental and Ontological Simulacra: Non-Rationality and Non-Reality in Works by Philip K. Dick
Kudrna, David ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
This thesis offers a model for the underlying architecture of the narrative reality in science-fiction works by Philip K. Dick, arguing that Dick's fictional worlds are grounded in the pervasive metamorphosis - the overarching perception of the shifting - of the narrative fabric operating under the conditions of non-rationality and non-reality. The hyphenated coinages conveniently stand for the paradigms of the reality and mental configurations in PKD subverting the seemingly natural dichotomizing oppositions and hierarchies of the real/unreal and the rational/irrational. Bringing in Gilles Deleuze's ontology of difference, this thesis explains the non-rationality and non-reality of Dick's worlds in Deleuzian terms as, firstly, inducing the perception of fictional reality as realizing the innate potential of being by the perpetual becoming of being in multiplicity and, secondly, engendering - in the vein of Deleuzian simulacra - the impossibility of apprehending and categorizing fictional reality unequivocally. The thesis considers and evaluates the underlying assumptions and claims common to various approaches to the subject of reality in PKD's fictions in order to provide the essential context for the following development of the theoretical basis for non-rationality and non-reality shifting....
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Labyrinths in Postmodernism: Danielewski, Pynchon, and Wallace
Šosterič, Teja ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
This thesis explores the labyrinthine nature of three primary texts: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. Various labyrinthine features of the novels, such as labyrinthine narrative, language, structure on the page and labyrinths as a plot element are discussed to determine the extent to which these novels resemble mazes. Also considered are the choices readers make when reading forking, labyrinthine narratives and the level to which they become participants in guiding the narrative. Furthermore, the thesis explores what postmodern labyrinthine novels have to say about the society and our contemporary understanding of material reality. It discusses the reasons behind the shift to the increasingly complex and more sinister multicursal labyrinths that are predominant in our time, which are indicative of a crisis in society caused by excessive individualism. While the primary focus is on the aforementioned three novels, the thesis also includes other media and other forms of labyrinthine narratives to show the diversity of the form and the prevalence of mazes in our time, as well as to discuss the development of the mazy form in the future.
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Emerson's Self-reliance as a Core Value of American Society
Zeimannová, Adéla ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
From the time of the establishment of American society till now, themes of self-reliance and freedom belong to the most recognized values of the U.S. Studies have shown that the values of American society, even though they adapted to political and sociological changes, share a common base with their original form. This thesis researches specifically the role of self-reliance in relation to an American essayist, writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his direct influence in establishing self-reliance along with freedom and individualism as one of the main values of American society. This study aims to determine how Emerson's theory of self-reliance and his ideology influence the thinking of modern America, and whether the values cultivated by him are still present in modern U.S. society. The focus of this research lies primarily on how Emerson's ideology has implanted into the minds of Americans from the time of the changing nineteenth century American society, and the birth of this ideology, to its present-day significance in modern-day America. The main source of Emerson's thinking and refinement of his theory of self-reliance is his essay entitled "Self-reliance," in which he defines his theory. His other works, primarily his other essays, Nature, "History," and his sermons and journals...
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Identity, Capitalism and Aesthetics in Invisible Man
Kovařík, Tomáš ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
While conventional readings of Invisible Man primarily focus on its status as a race-critical novel, this BA thesis will discuss and develop the notion that the novel is in fact an experimental Bildungsroman whose narrator is a universal figure and whose development across the narrative is analogical to that of any person building their identity in today's late capitalist society. By analyzing key moments in the novel with the help of late-20th -century and contemporary critical, cultural and political theories, the text will arrive at an original reading that synthesizes those approaches, and which can be used to better understand even contemporary life. The first chapter will establish what precisely makes the text an experimental coming-of-age novel by introducing the genre's conventions that started in German Romanticism with Goethe, and will then trace these features and their distinctive emergences in Invisible Man. The second chapter will then consist of an analysis of the social system as it is presented in the novel, exploring the oppressive capitalist power structure that both requires and prevents the narrator's assimilation, and highlighting how specific characters in the novel cling to their power with no regard for the experience of others. This will be supported by theories and...
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The Function of Paranoia in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
Burleson, Jason ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
(EN) The present MA thesis focuses on the function of paranoia found in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Pynchon's novel is routinely considered one of the finest pieces of American fiction to emerge after World War II and no discussion of this book can avoid the topic of paranoia. Its usage dates back to the time of Hippocrates and, after centuries of addition, the term paranoia is no longer confined to the medical community. After entering popular usage there is no consensus as to how this term is defined. It now possesses a sort of freedom that Pynchon routinely exploits. Paranoia resists isolation in this text. The specific approach to understanding its function is dependent on three parts. First, the reader must identify the countless forms of paranoia spread throughout Gravity's Rainbow. Next, one must understand why a specific example from the novel represents a form of paranoia in Pynchon's fictional world. Finally, the reader must recognize why an isolated form of paranoia is present and what Pynchon hopes to achieve through its presentation. The paranoia found in Gravity's Rainbow has no fixed meaning. This is a conscious decision on the part of Pynchon and its central goal is to destabilize the entire narrative, which is a central part of paranoia's immense power regularly employed....
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Postmodernities in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49
Cranfordová, Anna ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
Thomas Pynchon is considered one of the key postmodern authors. This BA thesis aims to explore the way his novel The Crying of Lot 49 reflects contemporary society by utilizing some of the "postmodernities": the different aspects of postmodernism and key features of postmodern literature. An ultimate definition which would explain postmodernism completely is not possible yet (and perhaps never will be) and so this thesis achieves its aim by studying multiple postmodern theories developed in the second half of the 20th century and applying them to the reading of this novel. The thesis draws primarily upon the work of some of the most important postmodern philosophers and theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Fredric Jameson and Linda Hutcheon whose ideas about postmodernity correspond greatly with those employed in The Crying of Lot 49. The postmodern features which the thesis looks at are those such as the mistrust in metanarratives, ontological plurality and the related notions of conspiracy and paranoia, the simulacrum and the spectacle. The society portrayed in the novel represents a system of power structures and entangled orders of simulacra, driven by commodity fetishism and ruled by a flow of images and advertisements, breaking the boundaries between the real...
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David Foster Wallace, Technology and the Self
Russell, Alexander ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
This thesis is concerned with an analysis of how David Foster Wallace's treatment of technology defines his understanding of the self in late 20th-century and early 21st-century America. With a primary focus on how this understanding evolved between the publication of his major novel Infinite Jest (1996) and his posthumously published unfinished novel The Pale King (2011), this thesis also takes into consideration Wallace's ideas as expressed through his many short stories, non-fiction works, and critical essays, most prominently "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" (1993). This thesis first briefly places Wallace in the context of contemporary literary scholarship, evaluating the state and extent of the nascent field of Wallace Studies. It then proceeds to examine and map out the philosophical underpinnings to Wallace's conception of the self, emphasising the importance of existential thought and the notion that the self is to be created rather than pre-existing in the individual. Technology as it is presented in Infinite Jest and The Pale King is then examined in relation to this philosophical understanding of the self, proving itself consistently to be an impediment to the existential self-becoming valorised in the novels. Wallace's early interest in entertainment technology as...
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Between Nostalgia and Pragmatism: Cormac McCarthy's 'Border Trilogy.'
Polívka, Zdeněk ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
THESIS ABSTRACT This thesis deals with the problematics and the role of American frontier and American West in Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy consisting of All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1999). The reading proper focuses mainly on the second novel of the trilogy, making frequent references to both the other two volumes of the trilogy and to Blood Meridian (1985), a novel directly preceding the trilogy itself. The main goal of the thesis is to demonstrate that the trilogy not only critically engages with the American nationalist ideology represented by a nostalgically conceptualized myths of the American frontier, but that it also offers its own alternative vision of the concept of the frontier and of American national identity. The thesis further claims that McCarthy's critical approach to the mythical representations of the American history bears strong resemblance to the philosophy of American pragmatism as defined by a French philosopher Giles Deleuze in his works dedicated to American thinking and culture. In his pragmatic view of American identity the frontier ceases to function in its traditional, nationalistic sense as a line of separation that divides the social and political space into binary categories, and instead it is understood as an open and...
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Woman's Revolt: Revolt in Women's American Prose of the End of the 19th Century
Kyllar, Václav ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
In my bachelor's thesis, I would like to research the subject of woman's revolt in late 19th-century and early 20th-century American women prose. I have been prompted to do this by a series of inspiring lectures on American literature provided to me by Charles University and especially by those discussing the work of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. The arguably most famous works of these authoresses-namely The Awakening and The House of Mirth-deal with a woman's revolt against the patriarchal structures that are oppressing them. Their revolts succeed only to a varying degree and what is most important, they all end in the death of the main protagonist. Such a price for a revolt against the patriarchal rules made me wonder about a couple of problems involved in the relationship between women of late 19th and early 20th century and their society at large. Firstly, I would like to explore the nature of these revolts-who was rebelling against what, why did they rebel and how? Secondly, I would like to answer the question, if the revolt that the heroines of the previously mentioned books succeeded and if not, if it was even possible to succeed (giving the prevailing patriarchal ideology of that time)? My objective is to provide sufficient answers to these questions. The core of my argument and thesis is...
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