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Representations of the female in the work of Charles Bukowski
Mecner, Michal ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
Women. Coincidentally and yet not coincidentally the title of a Charles Bukowski novel and the main subject of this thesis. Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994) was a German-born prolific American writer whose poetry and prose revolve about the underground life of Los Angeles. His characters were drunks, hustlers, prostitutes, losers, and social misfits. As inspiration he had countless dead-end factory jobs, love-hate relationships, or afternoons spent in the racetrack. After a hard day's work he cracked open a beer, put on a classical record, and began composing poems until his fingers "began to bleed" from typing or until the police came on account of the neighbors' complaint about his disturbing the peace. Bukowski's work in general is centered around the antithesis of the traditional American dream but to be more precise we should say that Bukowski was largely ignorant of the conventional way of living and the American go-getter ideal. Among the low class which became the most frequent subject of Bukowski's writing there is no such thing as daydreaming and the nights are too wild to be spent on dreaming either. There is simply no place for dreams in the lives of lower classes; there is only the rough reality of life at the bottom of everything. No wonder the author chose "Don't try" as his epitaph, often...
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Bernard Malamud's Selected Fiction in the Context of Black-Jewish Literary Relations
Simonová, Anna ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
Although Bernard Malamud's fiction has been frequently regarded as allegorical and symbolic, Malamud did not avoid the period's social issues in his works, such as the racial question and the changing nature of relationship between American Jews and African Americans. The present thesis aims to discuss Malamud's selected fiction dealing with Black- Jewish relations, namely short stories "Angel Levine," (1955) "Black Is My Favorite Color" (1963) and the novel The Tenants, (1971) and to place them into the context of Black-Jewish relations in the United States and of Black-Jewish literary dialogues and the tensions they express. It thus seeks to evaluate Malamud's role in the discourse of Black-Jewish relations in America. Calling upon a theoretical framework, outlined in chapter 2, based on philosophical and sociological findings of Judith Butler, John Searle, and Michael Omi with Howard Winant, the study examines the role of language and literature in constructing the Self and the Other (understood both as individual and collective identities, including categories of race and ethnicity), suggesting thus that literary texts, such as Malamud's selected fiction, are a part of discursive dialogue through and against which American Jews and Blacks construct their identities. Apart from the approaches to...
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African-American Mothers in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Toni Morrison's Beloved
Piňosová, Michaela ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
This BA thesis examines the concept of a black mother as a key figure in the fight for freedom as depicted in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and further explored in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Stowe's novel presents the idealized concept of motherhood in characters such as Eliza Harris, Aunt Chloe, Mary Bird and Rachel Halliday. These characters represent Stowe's ideology of Christian motherhood, in which the mother acts as a mediator of moral and religious principles in her family and community. To enable the identification of white middle-class female readers with the African-American characters in her novel, Stowe employed a distinctive method of characterization in Uncle Tom's Cabin. One of the main characteristics of her female figures is their ability to perform a maternal role. Mother love is depicted as a universal force, which is common to both white and African-American mothers, and which is equivalent to the love of Christ. Stowe believed that motherhood based on Christian values would free the United States from slavery and rebuild her society. For these reasons, Stowe encouraged white middle-class wives and mothers to present their abolitionist stances in their families and mediate them to their husbands, whose opinions might have been influential in political development in...
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Southern Womanhood: A Story Behind the Southern Belle
Petrušová, Gabriela ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The present MA thesis focuses on the development of the archetype of the Southern Belle in the selected works of American fiction, namely John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, William Faulkner's Sanctuary and Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. The main task is to explore how the archetype of the Southern Belle was constructed and (if) transgressed at different times in the American literary tradition from the period of antebellum South to the era of the Southern Renaissance. Since the archetype of the Southern Belle is connected with the white upper class society it will be also discussed in this respect. By comparing texts from different historical periods I want to compare the different nature of cultural and social conditions that contributed and informed the meaning and the function of the Southern Belle. Moreover, by selecting Southern woman writer and Southern male writers respectively I want to compare female and male perspective on the literary representation of the Southern Belle. The first chapter briefly addresses the development of the American South as a region with a distinct social structure and cultural values and attempts to position the figure of the Southern Belle within that socio-historical context. Chapters three, four and five introduce and analyze the archetype of the...
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Faith and the Search for Identity in the Works of J. D. Salinger
Pospíšilová, Tereza ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to study four characters in the works of the American Jewish author J.D. Salinger, namely in The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters," "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Teddy." The characters chosen for this thesis are Holden Caulfield, Franny Glass, Seymour Glass and Teddy McArdle. All these characters have found themselves at a critical point in their lives faced with questions about the meaning of life. They search for genuineness and struggle against "phoniness," to use Holden's favourite word, and do not feel content with the values set by the postwar American society. This thesis studies the reasons for their crises, their search for identity, together with its outcomes. It determines what role religion, faith and philosophy play in the process. The socio-cultural context of Salinger's work encourages questions about identity not only as a consequence of the confusion in identity and values brought about by the Second World War but also the tensions caused by the Cold War. Salinger's characters studied in this thesis are intellectuals who search for answers to existential questions in this period of change and as a result of not wanting to belong they alienate themselves from the society. This thesis examines the choice of...
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A dream shared: community and politics in selected 19th and 20th century American utopias
Kounovská, Kateřina ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
The tendency to dream of a better tomorrow, a better society and a better world had existed long before utopian writing was defined by Sir. Thomas More in 1516. Utopian ideas are present all throughout history, from Greek and Roman literature, myths and mythology, various festivals or the "Cokaygne" utopias to religious paradise, the belief in infinite progress, utopian science fiction and finally the modern western utopia. This thesis will focus on four selected American literary utopias: Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887, Jack London's Iron Heel, Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia and Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. It seeks to analyze the social notions inherent in the four ideal utopian societies portrayed in these novels, the suggested process of social and historical change leading up to them and to note the development of selected social issues in the nineteenth and the twentieth century through the discussion of these works. The introduction will begin with a brief discussion of the background of utopian writing, include arguments for perceiving the institution of an artist as a cultural force, as well as include the historical and cultural background necessary for the discussion of the novels. Chapters two to five will deal with the proposed literature in a more concrete manner,...
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Violence, Guilt and Punishment in Selected Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Gemrichová, Marie ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
The BA thesis explores selected writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who addressed in his works many themes that range from nature through difficult relationships of characters and their communities to Biblical allusions. Some of the prominent themes which can be explored in his novels (such as The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and Fanshawe) are the themes of violence, guilt and punishment. These chosen themes serve as topics that are treated individually in each novel. Consequently the novels are compared. The thesis first focuses on an exploration of the theme of violence, to which extent it appears in Hawthorne's novels, which characters are victims and transgressors, and where violence leads to. At the same time it explores the feeling of guilt of Hawthorne's characters, and whether guilt appears after a committed violent act, as well as the consequences that come in the form of the transgressors' punishment. Namely, I explore the relationship of Hester Prynne with Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth (The Scarlet Letter), the two original families of the Pyncheons and the Maules and the influence of the ancestors on their heirs (The House of the Seven Gables) and the actions of the mysterious "angler" compared to the deeds of the individuals around Harley College (Fanshawe)....
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Depiction of Media in British Dystopian Fiction
Bakič, Pavel ; Clark, Colin Steele (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The thesis aims to give an overview of the treatment of media in texts that have formed modern dystopian writing and to which new additions in the genre necessarily relate. This set of texts consists of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and When the Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells; first chapter substantiates this selection and proceeds to define the concepts of "media" and "dystopia". Second chapter is concerned with the understanding of history in dystopian societies and shows that the very concept of historicity is undesirable for a totalitarian state, which seeks to blur history and reduce it to a three-point schema "before the Event - the Event (revolution) - after the Event". Closer analysis then shows that the Event itself can be divided into a further triad that has to be completed in order to pass into eternal post-Event society. Third chapter describes the use of citizens as media and shows that while Huxley's society uses what Michel Foucault calls "biopower" to achieve this goal, Orwell's society rather uses the concept of "discipline". Fourth chapter turns to printed media a the privileged role they are ascribed in the novels: The authors see literature as an embodiment of individuality and, at the same time, as a guarantee of tradition established by an...
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