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The World of David Walliams and Roald Dahl's Children's Books. A Comparative Analysis
TŮMOVÁ, Eliška
Through a comparative analysis of the prosaic work of two British authors of children's literature, the bachelor thesis will attempt to describe the dynamics of the development of literary works for children's readers in the context of British fantasy literature. By way of examples from works of the contemporary author David Walliams, the thesis will deal with themes, motifs and manner of narration of the author of humorous children's prose in comparison with the literary legacy of works of Roald Dahl. The thesis focuses its attention on the form of literary grotesque and hyperbole, which in the context of works for children's readers opens up controversial themes in the case of both mentioned authors.
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Black Characters in British Literature of the 19th century
BENEŠOVÁ, Tereza
The aim of my diploma thesis is to analyse black characters in British literature of the 19th century. For the analysis, I chose Thackeray's Vanity Fair, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Sanditon, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone. To my analysis I also included the historical background and summarized history of slavery. I also considered the social question on the topic in my thesis.
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The Monster in British Gothic Fiction
BUREŠOVÁ, Kateřina
The Gothic fiction of the 19th century features a number of characters with monstrous qualities as the genre focuses on the darker side of our reality. It populates its pages with supernatural, monstrous beings that bring terror and anxiety to their victims. These characters and their counterparts thus shed light onto the fears, anxieties and paradoxes of 19th century Britain. As they hunt, terrorise, unsettle and cross boundaries they reveal to us the tenets of human nature. Examination of seminal Gothic characters such as the vampire in Dracula, Carmilla and Christabel, the Creature and his creator in Frankenstein and the sinister doubles of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde thus helps us understand the mind-set of that era.
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The legend of the vampire in the works of 19th century British literature
Hezinová, Jana ; Beran, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee)
The figure of the vampire is one of the strongest images in present-day culture. It appears in films books, merchandise, and even has an entire subculture associated with the modern gothic. The process of the development of this figure has a long and complex history that reflects the development of culture and society. The popularity of the use of this figure is partially based on its versatility, adaptability and ability to broach various themes and features that reflect the present day society. This fascination with the vampire trope is also due to the development of this figure from folklore in to literature in the nineteenth century and its subsequent use in the popular works of the time. This thesis attempts to briefly explore the early development of the figure of the vampire in the European context and compare it to its early appearances in literature. Namely, it will focus on the appearance of the vampire in nineteenth century British literature. The thesis of this work will attempt to determine the nature of the vampire in the cultural concepts of the time. It will also follow how the changes in the traditional narratives are reflected and transformed in the concept of the narrative of the "urban Gothic". The formulation of the basic structural background of Victorian society in politics,...
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"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me": Female Independence in the English Novel 1795 - 1820
Jiránková, Lucie ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Horová, Miroslava (referee)
In the 1790s, the framework of women's protests against the injustice they faced underwent a distinctive change, which inevitably imprinted itself into contemporary literature. The period discussed in this thesis was chosen to exemplify the beginnings of feminist awakening present in the novels of three women writers: Mary Hays, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Jane Austen. The aim of this thesis is to explore different attitudes towards attaining emotional, intellectual, social, and economic independence, while simultaneously discussing the period's construction of femininity, the discourse of natural rights, the issue of education, romantic love, and sensibility. The introductory chapter describes the historical background and looks closely on the position of women in contemporary society in terms of their familiar and social status, economic dependence, education, character shaping, and their objectification of the marriage market. It also presents the view of women as depicted in conduct manuals and the works of the Jacobin (and also Anti-Jacobin) novelists. Finally, it introduces the novelists in question and elaborates on the influence of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women on the authors under analysis. The second chapter focuses its attention on the depiction of female independence in...
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"A Ball of String Full of Knots": Narrative Strategies in Jeanette Winterson's Early Novels and Their Later Development
Krejčí, Patrik ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to describe the employment of narrative strategies in the novels of Jeanette Winterson with the focus on their development over time. The specific novels to be addressed are: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, The Passion, Sexing the Cherry, Written on the Body, Art & Lies, Gut Symmetries and The PowerBook. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit serves as the thematic source for all the other texts, thus determining the sustained concentration on the issues of storytelling, time history. It also contains first narratological experiments, most notably the embedded narratives that are arguably the most crucial of the strategies Winterson utilizes, for they appear in some form in all of her novels. A significant contribution of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry is their historical setting, which accentuates the clash between fantasy (storytelling) and facts (history). Moreover, they introduce a second narrator in order to enrich the texts with an additional perspective and they use the ensuing duality of the narrators to problematize gender. In the last four novels, Winterson reaches the peak of her experimentation, since they take the themes of the previous novels even further, as if exploring what are the limits of storytelling. The complexity of the narrative structures has deepened,...
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Jeanette Winterson`s Postmodern Historical Novels: Sexing the Cherry and The Passion as Historiografic Metafictions.
Araslanova, Anna ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
Nineteenth and early twentieth century theorists believed that history was based on actual facts traced by written evidence which justified those facts` apparent objectivity. Later theorists, under the influence of the poststructuralists` ideas of textuality of reality, doubted those concepts assuming that the historical data cannot be perceived objectively. This led to the further assumption that history is a construct, a discourse created by the historian who narrates it to the others. Consequently, in the Postmodern understanding, history is a subjective rather than an objective concept. Under those fairly new concepts the historical novels evolve into another form, a new kind of "fictional history". According to Linda Hutcheon, this form of Postmodern historical novel can be called historiographic metafiction. She uses that term to describe fiction which is both metafictional and historical: it is a specific form of metafiction that "draws attention to its status as an artefact" in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. Those fictions "situate [themselves] within historical discourse" while still claiming to be fictitious. Thus, they problematize the very distinction between history and fiction by showing the parallels between writing literature and writing...
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"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?": Representations of Slavery in the West Indies and Abolitionist Rhetoric on the Road to Emancipation
Bartová, Nikola ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
This thesis is concerned with literature connected with the abolition of slavery in British colonies. The thesis will treat the topic of the abolitionist movement from the perspective of social, cultural and literary history from the beginnings until the abolition of slavery in British colonies in the Caribbean in 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act. The thesis will focus on the discourse of race and slavery. The chosen authors represent different opinions and perspectives as the discussion will focus on sentimental poetry, travel writings as well as slave narratives. The chief aim is to identify and define the strategies of abolitionist discourse and the rhetorical practices which it employed especially in shaping the image of Africans and how the hegemonic discourse of sentimentalism influenced their writing. The first part of the thesis is concerned with establishing a theoretical background and the establishing of the literary traditions and customs of the eighteenth century, definition of the sentimental discourse and philosophies of the Enlightenment. This will be framed by a definition of Edward Said's "Orientalism" as well as Paul Gilroy's theory of the "Black Atlantic," which will enable us to define the space between Britain, Africa and the Caribbean, where the history of slavery of...
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Transformation of the Gothic in Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
Mikulová, Martina ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Beran, Zdeněk (referee)
Thesis abstract: Despite the fact that some critics view the period of the true Gothic as ending in the year 1820, others consider it to be a genre, as well as an aesthetic, which can still be perceived across various different cultural aspects to this day. Possibly the best way to approach the Gothic within the realm of literature is to observe several key examples of the Gothic topos, which was grounded in the original Gothic pieces of the eighteenth century. During the course of the nineteenth century, a historical period which from the cultural point of view appears almost inherently Gothic, British Gothic writing has undergone considerable changes and development, maintaining several of the key Gothic features, namely those of setting, isolation, and character types, modifying them in the process. Through this, it can be observed to what extent the aspects remain, and just how far-reaching their transformation was within the six exemplary works - Frankenstein, The Vampyre, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Carmilla, and Dracula. Another important aspect overlaying the selected works is that of monstrosity - a rather physical interpretation of the inner monstrosities of humans, or indeed an entire culture. The literary works, no matter how different at first glance they may appear to be, all utilize typical...
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