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Signifying in the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt
Koy, Christoper Erwin ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee) ; Jařab, Josef (referee)
(English): The dissertation is fundamentally a study of intertextuality. Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was an African American novelist, essayist and short story writer whose voracious reading habits of classical Western literature as well as the writing of his contemporaries had a substantial impact on his writing, an impact which is investigated for the first time applying the theory of African American rhetoric of Henry Louis Gates. The study applies the notion of "signifying" (as Gates describes it in The Signifying Monkey) to Chesnutt and his use of fiction by Ovid, Apulieus, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Washington Cable and Albion Tourgée. The research explores how Chesnutt quotes from, revises and parodies, (among other mimetic strategies), the language, plots and characters of the aforementioned writers. Abstrakt (česky): Tato disertační práce se zabývá studiem intertextuality v díle afroamerického autora románů, esejí a povídek Charlese W. Chesnutta (1858-1932), který byl ve své tvorbě významně ovlivněn vlastní horlivou četbou klasické západní literatury i literární tvorbou svých současníků. Tato disertace je prvním pokusem o prozkoumání těchto vlivů, a to s využitím teorie afroamerické rétoriky, jejímž autorem je Henry Louis Gates. Práce aplikuje pojem "signifikace"...
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Signifying in the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt
Koy, Christoper Erwin ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee) ; Jařab, Josef (referee)
(English): The dissertation is fundamentally a study of intertextuality. Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) was an African American novelist, essayist and short story writer whose voracious reading habits of classical Western literature as well as the writing of his contemporaries had a substantial impact on his writing, an impact which is investigated for the first time applying the theory of African American rhetoric of Henry Louis Gates. The study applies the notion of "signifying" (as Gates describes it in The Signifying Monkey) to Chesnutt and his use of fiction by Ovid, Apulieus, Walter Scott, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Washington Cable and Albion Tourgée. The research explores how Chesnutt quotes from, revises and parodies, (among other mimetic strategies), the language, plots and characters of the aforementioned writers. Abstrakt (česky): Tato disertační práce se zabývá studiem intertextuality v díle afroamerického autora románů, esejí a povídek Charlese W. Chesnutta (1858-1932), který byl ve své tvorbě významně ovlivněn vlastní horlivou četbou klasické západní literatury i literární tvorbou svých současníků. Tato disertace je prvním pokusem o prozkoumání těchto vlivů, a to s využitím teorie afroamerické rétoriky, jejímž autorem je Henry Louis Gates. Práce aplikuje pojem "signifikace"...
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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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The theme of love in Toni Morrison's Sula and Beloved
Brzobohatá, Michaela ; Robbins, David Lee (referee) ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor)
Toni Morrison was born in 1931 as Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio. She studied at Howard University and later at Cornell. She worked as an English teacher, but in 1965 she became a senior editor at the Random House. Thanks to her, many African American works were published. As Henry Louis Gates observes, as a writer, Morrison was influenced by the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and by William Faulkner. Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. Sula was published in 1974, followed by Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved in 1987. In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, becoming the first African American woman to win the prize.1 Morrison continues to publish until the present day; her most recent works include Paradise, Love, and A Mercy. When putting Morrison's work into a wider context, we have to consider the difficulties of African American self-expression in literature. According to Barbara Christian, in the 1970s and 1980s, the time Morrison published most of her novels, African American women writers undertook an exploration of their history and community. They were finally able to express what the previous generations were not, as they were permitted to express themselves in limited ways, due to racism and sexism. Starting with...
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The depiction of the changing consciousness of women in three novels of the turn of the century
Potočková, Kristýna ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
The aim of this work is to document how the substantial change in the social status of women that took place at the turn of the twentieth century is reflected in three novels of that period, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, The Awakening by Kate Chopin and The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and in the lives of the authors. The essential and common themes of these texts are marriage and motherhood, the two institutions which reflect the most the changing consciousness of women. The historical background of the period provides evidence for the division of roles in the marital institution, which was strongly established in the preceding centuries, and for the unequal position of women in general, resulting from the male superiority, mostly fortified by men's financial dominance. The heroines, akin to the authors, come from the upper or upper-middle classes which were the most active in the feminist movement because these classes had time and education to assess the situation and propose transformations. Art and sexuality are in various ways essential to the process of self-realization. The creative and sexual drives can be both an opportunity for a woman's liberation as well as an incentive for rejecting to submit to men that is enforced by men's habit of collecting works of art (inclusive of women) or...
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A dream shared: community and politics in selected 19th and 20th century American utopias
Kounovská, Kateřina ; Robbins, David Lee (referee) ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor)
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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An Analysis of Francis Fukuyama's Arguments Exemplified on Contemporary Dystopian Cultural Production
Šinaľ, Martin ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
In this thesis I analyze and problematize Francis Fukuyama's position on posthumanism, largely expressed in his 2002 book Our Posthuman Future. In it he warns against the likely negative outcome of a potential biotechnological revolution, which could enable easy access to interfering with human genome via practices such as genetic modification or human cloning. Fukuyama's major assumption is that all members of society must meet some limited standards of humanity in order to be equal, because if people acquire different levels of artificially altered "human natures," the outcome will be stratification, irrecuperable inequality and perhaps even class warfare. For this reason, Fukuyama calls for a pre-emptive regulation of genetic manipulation so as to avoid a "posthuman future." I contrast this theory with a selection of transhumanist and feminist theorists as well as with examples from fiction, namely the trilogy Lilith's Brood (1987-1989) by Octavia Butler and the novel Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro. Drawing on these sources I conclude that Fukuyama's position is harmfully exclusionary and divisive; and also counter- productive in the sense that in his pursuit of securing freedom and equality he renders potential posthuman subjects fundamentally inferior, thus principally defeating his...
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Neither Old, Nor New: The Southern Belle Archetype in Lillian Hellman's Birdie Hubbard from The Little Foxes and Tennessee Williams's Blanche Dubois from A Streetcar Named Desire
Soukupová, Markéta ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The aim of this BA thesis is to describe the origins of the Old South's archetypal feminine ideals and how they were altered in the course of time. In what follows, I will attempt to explain how the Southern Belle myth became (re-)defined, enacted and/or maintained throughout the era of the Antebellum, Post-Bellum and New South perspective. The thesis will employ literary theory, namely in respect to relevant archetypal definitions that will be applied to the specific Southern Belle figures, as well as historical, social and cultural studies. Finally, feminist and gender theories will be utilized in order to demonstrate how the cultural archetype of the Southern Belle served as a socially constructed norm enforcing women's passivity and submission to patriarchy. After the introductory chapter, which will present the American South and its inhabitants as a distinct cultural entity, chapter two will discuss the aims and methodology of the thesis and the basic terminology that is essential for the Southern Belle concept. Chapter three shall afterwards briefly introduce the specific constructs of the Post-Bellum (Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes) and New South (Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire) Belles in relation to their concrete socio-historical contexts. Chapter four will then consist...
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Tensions Within the Abolitionist Movement in the United States of America
Dvořáková, Irena ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The thesis deals with the abolitionist movement in the United States of America and approaches it as an internally disunited movement. It focuses on the conflicts between its most influential representatives, including William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass. Different motives of the anti-slavery leaders' involvement in the matter are analyzed and used to explain the arguments among these. Attention is given to the problem of racial oppression as one of the main forces having determined not only the development of the abolitionist movement but also the events following the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, mostly the rise of the Black nationalism movement and of black racism. Even though many abolitionists saw slavery as based on racism and, therefore, endeavored to reach its abolition, in practice, many of them refused to acknowledge racial equality between white and African American people. This paradox is one of the central problems of American abolitionism examined in the thesis. The first three chapters discuss abolitionist ideas of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and David Walker with focus on their distinct and opposing views. The fourth chapter deals with the emancipation of women as it was closely linked to the emancipation of slaves; the...
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