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The Organs of Perception and Expression in Samuel Beckett's Dramatic Works
Parin, Giulia ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
This thesis focuses on three plays written by Samuel Beckett: Play, Not I and Footfalls. Corporeality is the central theme of these works, which also connects them to an important and celebrated source of study and inspiration for the dramatist, The Comedy of Dante Alighieri. The influence played by Dante's descriptions of the body, particularly in the cantica of Inferno, is visible in Beckett's works for the ways in which the organs of perception and expression are treated at both textual and theatrical level. In the three plays the activities of mouth, eyes, ears (and less relevantly, nose) constitute the narrative focus of the text, while the sensorial aspects derived by their presence on stage determine the kind of exchange at play between actors and spectators. Staging immobilized, constricted and barely visible characters who, narrating obscure, uncertain stories, obsessively try to make a sense of their existential and physical conditions, the author gives life to a metatheatrical language rooted on instability and doubt. After the introductory opening chapter, the second chapter looks at the language of Dante's Inferno and at its thematization of corporeality, introducing the continuities between the poem and Beckett's drama. The third chapter juxtaposes the characters and the uncertain...
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Vertiginous relations in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra
Landerová, Petra ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
The recurrent theme of inter-human family relationships in a state of loss and decay in plays authored by Eugene O'Neill arises in part from the author's own traumatic relationship with his parents and with his brother James. Trying to deal with his torturous memories, O'Neill seeks answers through his cursed characters, who partly derive from the writer himself, yet also offer a universal portrayal of humankind as a victim of his own mental being and system. Given O'Neill's profound interest in psychoanalysis, the plays mostly take place in the life process of the individual minds of the protagonists and of the animating effect they have on others who populate the play-texts; therefore it is essential for the understanding of the play-works under critical consideration to look at the inner lives and worlds of these enigmatic characters, and to evaluate to what extent they act on their own will and where, conversely, unconscious forms of desire from other characters, memories, wishes, objects and so forth are instead determinant. The canonical plays Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra offer an intriguing blend of the forms and of the contents of the classical-traditional and of the modern stage play, as they extend the heritage and the lineage of ancient Greek tragedy, although situated in...
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Words versus music: analysis of Samuel Beckett's "Words and Music", "Cascando" and "Rockbaby"
Fořtová, Linda ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
It was my endeavour to demonstrate the manifold capacities of music with (or emanating from) a text. Indeed, I have proved that music is able to express what words cannot, and that there are many links between the verbal language and that of music, and thus both can be used in an interplay as it can be perceived in Cascando where Voice merges with Music in harmony and their arrangement constitutes a fugue; or both elements can challenge each other in an effort to ascertain which of them should be taken as superior to the other, as in Words and Music; or, even, that language freed of the customary syntactic chains is able to produce rhytmical patterns in accordance to what the words describe, as it is in Rockaby.
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Wives and Whores: Female characters in the plays of Harold Pinter
Schormová, Františka ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee)
This BA thesis discusses four female characters from three plays of the British dramatist Harold Pinter, placing them in context of depicting 'The Femine.' Pinter's female characters must not only be seen in the tradition of stereotypical depicting women, but also in context of the patriarchal concepts they have to face - the male dominance, male gaze and male bonding. The second chapter provides background for discussing female characters - reasons why to do so are provided and the idea of woman as 'the Other' is introduced. This concept led to the stereotyping of women and subsequently to their misrepresentation in fiction. The basic dichotomy of 'wife/whore' is investigated. The chapter also examines the specifics of representation on the stage with references to the development of drama. It concludes with placing Pinter within this context. The third chapter contains close reading of three Pinter's plays - The Homecoming, Old Times and Betrayal. The roles of female characters are examined in relationship to the power structures they are trying to dismantle. The chapter argues that even if they manage it, the victory does not challenge the patriarchal structure as such. The fourth chapter is focused on realisation of Pinter on Czech stages. It provides the history of the stagings, focusing...
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Manipulation of children in the prose of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell
Linhart, Marek ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Clark, Colin Steele (referee)
The focus of this thesis are two of the most prominent specimen of utopian literature, namely George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Despite the fact that Brave New World, which was published in 1932, predates Nineteen Eighty-Four by seventeen years and was written in a quite different social and political climate, both these books share many important elements. While depicting vastly different societies with diverse structures of power distribution, they both express certain fears and worries that their respective authors had about the future of civilisation, which is why they were chosen as primary texts for this thesis. More specifically, the main area of discourse is going to be the treatment of children and their relation to the state as depicted in these books. In this field, both Orwell's Oceania and Huxley's World State share the same objective, which is to turn children and the young generation in general into an obedient tool to be at the system's disposal. This aim is very prominent for many reasons in both books, but the results are the same; children willingly submit themselves fully to the state and become one of the major means the state possesses to achieve its goals. The degree of control over children both in Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty- Four is...
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Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin's The brazen serpent: a contextual analysis
Skrbková, Alžběta ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
Ní Chuilleanáin's collection The Brazen Serpent is fascinating on many levels and deserves a broad readership. However, due to the author's reputation for elusive and impenetrable poetry, the collection has not been as widely appreciated as it could have been had the readers been brave enough to flip and rotate the cover and dedicate to the collection the time and effort which the poems call for. The main dissuasion may seem to be the fact that the collection is deeply inspired by religious imagery and faith. However, in the analysis of the collection, it has been shown that although the poems are connected to the theme of religion, including topics such as nuns, the sacred versus the secular, saints and relics and other similar themes, there are many other layers of meaning which are hidden and have been excavated with the help of critical publications, interviews with the author and systematic close reading of the texts. This analysis of The Brazen Serpent, which incorporated biographical information, the Irish context, the feminine and feminist aspect, history - both personal and religious, aspires to be a useful tool for the better understanding of the rich symbolism contained in the poetry in its many layers of meaning. As was evident in the personal interview which I conducted with Ní Chuilleanáin,...
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The Depiction of Inner Consciousness in the Short Stories by Katherine Mansfield
Bambušková, Tereza ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
Thesis abstract This thesis will discuss Katherine Mansfield's depiction of the consciousness of the focalizer character using Sigmund Freud's theory of the ego and the superego. The conflict between the society and the individual will be treated in terms of the opposition of the ego, which represents the individual consciousness of the character that reacts to present circumstances and the superego, which is the sum of influences of the family and the social class that the individual belongs in. The behaviour and thoughts of the main character of the story present a subtle conflict between the ways he or she had been conditioned to act and think and the moments of clarity, or epiphanies, which are treated in this thesis as a manifestation of the ego. The depiction of the influences of the ego and the superego will be analysed both on the level of language and narration and on the level of themes and events in the stories. The role of the author will also be looked into, focusing particularly on the question of whether she intervenes with the story or influences the reader in any way. Another important device used in the depiction of the characters' mind are symbols (such as the aloe in "Prelude", the pear tree in "Bliss", the fur in "Miss Brill", the fly in "The Fly", the hat in "The Garden Party" etc.). I...
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Another Way Out: Women in Kate O'Brien's Fiction
Homolková, Šárka ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee)
Kate O'Brien was one of Ireland's best female writers; moreover, she was one of the first to centre on the Catholic Middle Class in her writing, as this class was long neglected. O'Brien was famous for her women-oriented books in which she portrayed the lives of women of the rising bourgeoisie of Ireland at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century. We can trace a certain development in O'Brien's writing, throughout her career she becomes more radical and comes to voice feminist notions about women being equal to men as well women's seeking independence from the world dominated by men. Most of her novels are family-oriented and may be called Bildungsromans as the protagonists, which apart from two books are all female, develop and grow to maturity and learn to understand the world and their place in it. As this thesis examined how the women in O'Brien's novels reflect the situation of women in her home country, it is apparent that throughout her life the writer became more radical and sceptical towards the fate of women in Ireland. Therefore, in her first written pieces she portrays women in their traditional roles as dutiful wives, daughters, or mothers. It is only in her later writing that the women manage to emancipate themselves and lead their lives independently. In O'Brien's first two...
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Shakespeare revisited: rewritings of Shakespeare in modern British drama
Rezková, Iva ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
The aim of the thesis is to analyze three recent British rewritings of William Shakespeare's tragedies - Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Edward Bond's Lear, and Sarah Kane's Blasted. The thesis attempts to trace parallels between the classical text and its modern transformation. Nevertheless, central to the study is the discussion of the reasons for dismantling Shakespeare's texts in order to compose own works of art out of their elements. The paper explores in what ways and to what purposes the three playwrights modernize Shakespeare and rewrite his tragedies. The analysis of the three modern plays based on Shakespeare is framed in a study of the shifting attitudes towards Shakespeare's plays and the changing patterns of their adaptations from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. As far as the development of approaches to Shakespeare's texts is concerned, the focus lies particularly on the late twentiethcentury phenomenon of rewriting classical texts in order to present a more updated and thus more accurate picture of contemporary reality and the current vision of human condition. Such a practice and such an approach to classical texts seem to be representative of Stoppard's, Bond's and Kane's plays.
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