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Corpus based analysis of selected lexicon for horses, its collocations and adjectives in Middle and Early Modern English
Vařáková, Zuzana ; Tichý, Ondřej (advisor) ; Šmídová Müllerová, Světlana (referee)
The bachelor thesis aims at investigating some aspects of the semantic field "horse" and its changes throughout the Middle English and Early Modern English periods on the example of four selected terms from the category of warhorses and aristocratic horses: palfrey, destrier, steed, and courser. The thesis focuses mainly on the collocations of these words, with particular (but not exclusive) emphasis on adjectives. Its main hypothesis is that the collocations of the words may reflect, and thus also help to understand, the historical uses and social perception of the selected types of horses in the given periods. The theoretical part discusses the concepts of collocations, semantic change, and the development of the English lexis. Moreover, the chapter deals with the evolution of the English warhorse and the aristocratic horse in order to provide historical background. The research part is based on two diachronic corpora, the Corpus of the Middle English prose and Verse (CME) and the Early English Books Online (EEBO). In the analysis, the collocations of the selected words are examined by categorising them into various semantic groups, and used to determine the semantic prosody of each term. The findings are also compared and contextualised with the information from the historical and cultural...
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Farm Animals in the Middle Ages. A Source of Livelihood, a Helper and a Noble Symbol.
Vařáková, Zuzana ; Bobková, Lenka (advisor) ; Svátek, Jaroslav (referee)
For medieval people, farm animals represented close companions in many ways - they provided meat and other food products, helped with work and very often, shared the same living space with their human owners. Moreover, they became a significant cultural symbol over time. The presented master thesis aims precisely at the reconstruction of these symbolic meanings in bohemical written sources of the 14th and 15th centuries, using three chosen animals as examples: cattle, goats, and swine. The thesis is composed of two main sections. The first and more empirical part follows the issue of domestication as well as the form of animal husbandry in the Bohemian lands during the 14th and 15th centuries. However, the core of the thesis itself lies in the fourth chapter, which deals with the symbolism and allegorical viewings of the animals in the individual sources, with emphasis on how and in what contexts farm animals were referred to. Medieval encyclopaedias, exempla, the political allegory The New Council of Smil Flaška of Pardubice, and Bohemical chronicles that were written during the specified period are used as sources for investigating this issue. Their analysis indicates that the symbolism of domestic animals was highly ambiguous, and one animal could carry both positive and negative connotations at...
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The damned, feared and ridiculed wolf in the Bohemian medieval society
Vařáková, Zuzana ; Bobková, Lenka (advisor) ; Nejedlý, Martin (referee)
In the Middle Ages wolves were traditionally seen as evil and demonic creatures, who had been killing farm and wild animals. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to reconstruct origins of these conceptions and their reflections in the society of Bohemian High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages. The emphasis was placed mainly on wolves in literature and on questions, why they had been hunted and seen as pests. The thesis also tries to cover, how the wolves' reputation was reflected in the chosen material sources, namely in heraldry of Bohemian nobility and towns and in Prague house insignia. Extensive range of sources had to be processed to accomplish the goals of this thesis such as historiographic narrative sources, medieval encyclopaedias, pragmatic documents as well as material sources, which included mainly seals and coats of arms. The thesis would like to contribute to broadening the knowledge of more complex topic of animals in Bohemian Middle Ages. Key words: wolves, animals, Middle Ages, material sources, heraldry, seals, house insignia
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