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Psychological aspects of the gothic in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's fiction
Procházková, Ilona ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee)
What is usually understood by the term "Gothic" is the distant and rather obscure period of Middle Ages connoting severe wars, fortified inhospitable castles and the burning of witches. Apart from that, the word is very often used specifically to describe the architecture of this time. However, especially in an English cultural context this word gained a secondary meaning which is not completely unrelated to the first one and which is to a large extent connected with literature. Under the influence of Romanticism, the second half of the eighteenth century bears witness to extended interest in uncanny Gothic castles or ruins, forlorn scenery and other melancholy places, with even greater stress put on its mysterious, obscure and frightening aspects that finally resulted in something which may be called the Gothic revival. Victor Sage writes that, "'Gothic' could connote any of a wide range of overlapping senses: horrid, barbarous, superstitious, Tudor, Druid, English, German, and even Oriental."1 One of the primary goals of Gothic literature was to create strong emotion of fear or even horror. Among the most popular settings of its fiction belong gloomy ancient chambers, buildings with rich pasts, abandoned decaying mansions, graveyards and similar places which help to establish the right atmosphere for...
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Movement and stagnation in Samuel Beckett's work
Kudrnová, Anna ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
Upon encountering the dramas and shorter prosaic works of Samuel Beckett, the reader or spectator will probably soon notice, apart from other characteristic features, the exceptional number of characters that limp, have various foot defects and pains, have problems with locomotion and balance, or who are even legless. In other cases, external causes impede the protagonists from moving, as for example in the play Happy Days, where Winnie is stuck in a mound of earth. Incapability of movement and stagnation, whether voluntary or forced, does not appear merely on the physical level; hesitation, inability to decide or act despite an urge to do so are themes frequently occurring in Beckett's texts; when we think of these manifestations of impotence in abstract terms, we realise that they represent stagnation as well: the inability to progress from one situation to another, further from one attitude or mental state etc. The characters often experience the ancient dilemma of activity versus passivity in human life; in many cases, Beckett illustrates it on motion. Another level on which a certain form of immobility emerges is often the structure of a text; that is to say, the plot does not reach any conclusion; the situation presented therein, although usually close to unbearable, does not change, or becomes...
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The American Identity in the Works of David Mamet and Sam Shepard
Sičák, Michal ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
In my thesis I focused on the matter of the relationship of Americans during the decades after World War II to their own identity, as well as to the myths of the West or consumer society. I wanted to compare these aspects on plays by Sam Shepard and David Mamet, two playwrights concerned with similar issues in 1960s and 1970s. In the theoretical part of the thesis I concentrated on the development of the American theater off Broadway. I described three significant theater groups of the era and the differences in their approach. I based the comparison of the plays on Richard Schechner's performance theory and J. L. Austin's theory of the so-called "performatives." Later I discussed the matters of rituals and myths in the postmodern society where I based my theory especially on Victor Turner's and Marie Maclean's work. The two main chapters are dealing with comparing two plays by each author with regard to the way Shepard and Mamet work with rituals and modern myths. Those are considered commonplace, insufficient, almost misleading in a modern society, and the plays' characters thus cannot cope with the society. They end up being on its outer edge and do not seem to be able to find the way back. As a result of the comparison of the plays based on the theoretical part I concluded that even though from the...
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Monologue Plays in Contemporary British and Irish Theatre
Pavelková, Hana ; Pilný, Ondřej (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee) ; Monks, Aoife (referee)
This dissertation examines a very popular and widespread trend in contemporary British and Irish theatre - monologue plays. One of the reasons of the recent boom of monologue-based theatre performances might be the fact that the condensed theatrical form presents a challenge for everyone involved - the playwrights, actors, and crucially also for the audience. The diversity and quantity of such plays present an obstacle that has deterred most theatre scholars from systematic analysis as it is difficult to decide on what ground such widespread phenomenon might be critically approached. Given the essential role the audience have as the only communication partner of the lonely monologists on stage, this work attempts to analyse the contemporary boom of monologue plays in the U.K. and Ireland by using a systematic framework, based on the various incorporations of the monologue, which enables examination of how specific strategies of the realisation of the monologue elicit audience engagement. First it explores monologue plays in which one actor/actress performs one character, then it deals with plays in which the performer re-enacts other characters, subsequently this work focuses on very rare experiments in the monologue form, where the performer re-enacts conflicting versions of their split selves and...
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Between Art and Politics: Disunity of Black Drama during the Harlem Renaissance
Polák, Ondřej ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
v Abstract The goal of this work is to prove and map out a split within the newly formed African American drama during the period of the Harlem Renaissance. A split between politicized plays that were used as a tool to raise the spirit and awareness of African Americans, and the "folk plays" that put emphasis on artistic expression without overtly focusing on protest or political agenda. This duality, personified by W.E.B. Du Bois and Alain Locke, defined black drama in the period between 1916 and 1937, and the thesis explains it both from the thoretical standpoint as well as a practical one - meaning from the standpoint of its two philosophical leads as well within the plays themselves. First, the thesis shows the point of view of W.E.B. Du Bois, who stood behind the idea of "propagandistic" plays, and then the view of his opponent Alain Locke, who wanted to let go of outright political agenda and instead sought to legitimize the position of African Americans through artistic merit. Both of these lines of thought garnered following in playwrights, which in turn caused the duality. The thesis goes on to map each ideology separately, along with plays that lean towards it. More specifically it examines Rachel, For Unborn Children, Don't You Want To Be Free? from the Protest School and The Broken Banjo, Plumes...
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Boland, McGuckian and Groarke: nature and the self in three contemporary Irish women poets
Skálová, Alena ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
This thesis comprises historical and critical introduction to contemporary women's poetry in Ireland and close reading of three poets of its two latest generations, Eavan Boland, Medbh McGuckian and Vona Groarke. It focuses on her perception of nature and attitude to the relationship between the human self and natural processes and objects. The contextual background to my reading emphasizes the feminist critique of the traditional false images of the woman's self in Irish poetry and politics, and suggests new opportunities of the most recent female poetic voices. The culturally rooted simplifying or even harmful connection between femininity and the fertile land or Catholic ideals of virginity has provoked a lot of indignation among contemporary women poets, and caused abundant literary attempts of its re-negotiation. The authentic poetic representation of the woman's sexual and spiritual connection to the land and nature along with women's subjective use of nature imagery belongs to crucial points of this re-negotiation. It is pursued extensively in all of the poetesses discussed in this paper. My close reading considers the political objectives of the poems and notices different modes of their artistic response to the relevant cultural questions. Nevertheless, it emphasizes also the independence...
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The power of self-delusion in Eugene O'Neill's Long day's journey into night and Arthur Miller's Death of a salesman
Klupková, Petra ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
Arthur Miller and Eugene Gladstone O'Neill both established themselves as major theatrical icons in America, also earning an international prestige as influential playwrights. While O'Neill is one of the most prominent playwrights America has seen at the turn of the 19th century, Miller markedly stands out from the generation that immediately followed. Their dramatic achievements were recognized both by the audience and the critics, resulting in the highest critical acclaim both in the form of various prestigious awards, O'Neill becoming the first American dramatist to receive the Nobel Prize, as well as causing remarkable controversy. The two plays that are to be examined, Miller's Death of a Salesman and O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, have both been praised as the authors' finest pieces of writing, and both received the Pulitzer Prize, O'Neill's fourth one, only this time awarded posthumously. Miller himself expressed his admiration to O'Neill's work, as he marked him his "favorite playwright" in an 1957 interview, referring to Long Day's Journey as to a "masterpiece." Even though it might seem that Miller's work draws richly upon the legacy of O'Neill, he refuses any influence of his upon his own writing.1 A similar respect can be seen with T.S. Eliot, who paid tribute to O'Neill by claiming...
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Polarities in the Works of Oscar Wilde
Burianová, Petra ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
Reading through the works of Oscar Wilde, one soon notices the many instances of polarity: the recurring themes of the body versus soul, good versus evil, city versus nature, artificial versus natural and many more. It is to be found in his plays as well as in his prose and fairy- tales. Yet these polarities do not necessarily have to oppose each other: the Wildean dialectic allows contraries to coexist, and thus we have the Star-Child who, through repentance, turns from evil to good; however this turn of character does not ensure a happy-ending, and makes us question whether "good really is good". A great number of Wilde's characters either live a double-life, have two distinct sides to their personality, or even several personalities, and in the case of Dorian Gray the split is literal. What led the author to constantly toy with this motif is a question worth examining. In Wilde's case, the artist's life cannot be entirely separated from his works since so much of what he was and what formed him is reflected in the texts he wrote. His statement that "what people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities" (Ransome, 162) shows that for Wilde, truth was not the opposite of "lie", but there may have been several different versions of truth. His aesthetic views,...
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Narrative Structures in Virginia Woolf's Shorter Fiction
Kovačeva, Elizabet ; Wallace, Clare (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
Thesis Abstract One of the basic principles of modernism was to evaluate existing traditions and cultural norms, to innovate them, and to get rid of them if necessary. The need and urge to innovate proved to be immensely productive in the short story genre. The short story is now perceived as independent of other prose forms precisely thanks to the modernists. Virginia Woolf was one of the most enthusiastic innovators of the form, her work in the genre is nevertheless often overlooked in comparison to her novels, or even in comparison to other short story writers, such as Katherine Mansfield or James Joyce. This thesis deals with selected narrative structures in Virginia Woolf's shorter fiction. It works with the basic assumption that when Woolf's short stories are read, her novels have to be taken into account as well due to numerous thematic and other affinities. However, it is also of importance to evaluate Woolf's short fiction without measuring them against her novels as these are two distinct genres. The thesis introduction presents an overview of the literary and cultural context of the times in which Woolf lived and wrote, with emphasis on her familiarity with the Russian writers, primarily Chekhov, and the first Post-Impressionist painters. The thesis then carries out four separate analyses of four...
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"Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be?" The Corrupted American Dream in the Selected Arthur Miller's and Tennessee Williams's Dramas
Hájková, Hana ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
In my thesis, I focused on the challenges of the American Dream and its damaging demands. I compared these aspects to The Glass Menagerie, All My Sons, and Death of the Salesman, plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, two playwrights concerned with similar issues in the 1940s and 1950s. Each chapter was introduced by Robert Frost's poem related to its topic. This element was added as a chapters' introduction to express the universality of the depicted issues and to tight the sections together under one pattern. In the theoretical part of the thesis, I concentrated on the 40s and 50s America and its features and the historical development of the American Dream. This section's main influences were works by Rodney P. Carlisle, Richard A. Schwartz, Stephanie Coontz, and Jim Cullen. With their books about America and its historical background, Carlisle, Schwartz, and Coontz provided a base for the factual context of this thesis. Cullen's work on the American Dream was used as the primary source for understanding the reasons behind the Dream and its historical development. The whole thesis was supported by arguments from Lauren Berlant, John W. Thoburn and Thomas L. Sexton, and Piotr Sztompka. Berlant's work on cruel optimism provided a possible explanation of particular behavior that accompanied...
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