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Political tendencies in Carl Sandburg's poetry
Dragounová, Jolana ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
1 Abstract Behind the poetry of Carl Sandburg, a poet often underestimated and perceived as insignificant, hides a strong political voice that raises various questions due to its directness and straightforwardness with focus on plain style and everyday imagery. Though at first glance, Sandburg's poetry may seem transparent and frank, critics debate over his true intent. On that account, it is necessary not to disregard his personal life and political beliefs in the analysis of his work for it had a significant impact. The aim of this thesis is to analyze Carl Sandburg's poetry during the period of the 1920s and 1930s and describe the influence and reflection of his political views on his work. His political life provides quite a colorful picture. In the beginnings of his early career, we could notice his leftist tendencies in his poetry, which peaked in his adulthood, particularly when Sandburg became a member of the Social-Democratic Party. During his life as a journalist, he paid attention to the injustice inflicted on working-class men, women and even children, and he was concerned about their insufficient working conditions. Apart from contributing to socialist newspaper the International Socialist Review, he was also working on political campaigns of socialist leaders. In his essay "You and Your Job,"...
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Evolution of the Approach to Death: John Updike's Novels of the 1960s
Müllerová, Magdalena ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
This thesis explores the approach to death in the novels of John Updike published in the 1960's, namely Rabbit Run, The Centaur and Couples. The importance of death in Updike's prose is universally acknowledged, but most critical works are concerned with other themes. The main focus of this thesis is the development of the approach to death of the main characters in the aforementioned novels as well as the overall change of Updike's approach to death over the three novels. The first chapter presents the theoretical background for two perspectives on death: death in Christian teachings and the theory of life and death drives by Sigmund Freud. Christianity is an important aspect of Updike's prose, not only because he is Christian himself, but the majority of his focal characters either are Christian or share Christian values. Traditional Christian notions are expanded upon by the concept of The American Religion, introduced by Harold Bloom in The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. The selection of Freud's theory is based on the close connection between sex and death in the novels, which is in accordance with the theory explained in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In the following three chapters, the individual novels are analysed. Each chapter examines the initial position...
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Identity, Capitalism and Aesthetics in Invisible Man
Kovařík, Tomáš ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
While conventional readings of Invisible Man primarily focus on its status as a race-critical novel, this BA thesis will discuss and develop the notion that the novel is in fact an experimental Bildungsroman whose narrator is a universal figure and whose development across the narrative is analogical to that of any person building their identity in today's late capitalist society. By analyzing key moments in the novel with the help of late-20th -century and contemporary critical, cultural and political theories, the text will arrive at an original reading that synthesizes those approaches, and which can be used to better understand even contemporary life. The first chapter will establish what precisely makes the text an experimental coming-of-age novel by introducing the genre's conventions that started in German Romanticism with Goethe, and will then trace these features and their distinctive emergences in Invisible Man. The second chapter will then consist of an analysis of the social system as it is presented in the novel, exploring the oppressive capitalist power structure that both requires and prevents the narrator's assimilation, and highlighting how specific characters in the novel cling to their power with no regard for the experience of others. This will be supported by theories and...
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Postmodernities in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49
Cranfordová, Anna ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
Thomas Pynchon is considered one of the key postmodern authors. This BA thesis aims to explore the way his novel The Crying of Lot 49 reflects contemporary society by utilizing some of the "postmodernities": the different aspects of postmodernism and key features of postmodern literature. An ultimate definition which would explain postmodernism completely is not possible yet (and perhaps never will be) and so this thesis achieves its aim by studying multiple postmodern theories developed in the second half of the 20th century and applying them to the reading of this novel. The thesis draws primarily upon the work of some of the most important postmodern philosophers and theorists such as Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Fredric Jameson and Linda Hutcheon whose ideas about postmodernity correspond greatly with those employed in The Crying of Lot 49. The postmodern features which the thesis looks at are those such as the mistrust in metanarratives, ontological plurality and the related notions of conspiracy and paranoia, the simulacrum and the spectacle. The society portrayed in the novel represents a system of power structures and entangled orders of simulacra, driven by commodity fetishism and ruled by a flow of images and advertisements, breaking the boundaries between the real...
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American Postwar Pilgrimage: The Beats in Paris
Kirlan, Margarita ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
The main objective of this thesis is to study the high point of the Beat Generation's production in Paris between 1957 and 1960 and to determine why it encouraged their major contribution to literature, art and criticism worldwide in the last quarter of the 20th century and today. Though most were born and educated in the United States, many of the most important Beat writers journeyed across the world in search of artistic recognition and determined to perform literary experiments they had failed to execute back home. This thesis will provide an overview of the Beat pilgrimage to Paris, a city which has been coined "an arbiter of cultural value in the postwar era." The thesis also attempts to examine the1 ways the Beats' time in Paris was invaluable for their influence on literature beyond American borders and how their writing was shaped by the oeuvres of such French writers as Rimbaud, Proust, Gide, Apollinaire, St.-John Perse, Céline, Cocteau, Genet, Michaux and others. This thesis2 will survey the intersection between French and American culture and the influence of both on Beat authors and the list of works to be analysed includes but is not limited to Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (1956), and "Kaddish" (1959); William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959), The Soft Machine; Jack...
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Persephone the Wanderer:" Myth in Contemporary Women's American Poetry
Kecsöová, Dominika ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
This thesis explores the relationship between the ancient Greek myth of Persephone and the poetry of contemporary U.S. women poets. Since myths do not have a single or authoritative version, they are open to re-writing and are palimpsestic in nature; thus myth in general serves as meta-narrative and is constantly re-written in different contexts. Works of four contemporary American poets are analysed: Louise Glück, Rita Dove, Jorie Graham and A.E.Stallings. These poets create alternative versions of the myth of Persephone; for Glück, Dove, Graham and Stallings, among many other women poets, the Persephone myth presents an opportunity to deal with the heritage of the classical era and themes of love, death and mother-daughter relationship. The potential for rewriting is apparent when considering the two main sources of the myth, the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter" and Ovid's Metamorphoses which also present slightly different narratives concentrating on particular aspects of the Persephone myth. Each of the four poets approaches myth in a slightly different manner, while working with the basic motifs contained therein. The objective of the thesis is to describe the differences and similarities between the four re- visions of the Persephone myth and to comment on the lasting influence of myth in...
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Behind Enemy Lines: The New American Poetry and the Cold War Anthology Wars
Delbos, Stephan ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee) ; Harris, Kaplan (referee)
Behind Enemy Lines: The New American Poetry and the Cold War Anthology Wars The New American Poetry, a poetry anthology edited by Donald Allen and published by Grove Press in 1960, is perhaps the single most influential American poetry anthology in history. It not only brought some of the most important poets of the 20th century to international prominence, but it also created an editorial model that numerous prominent future anthologists would follow, and helped establish the image of American poetry as divided between competing camps of free verse and formal poets, or rebellious and academic poets, battle lines that were drawn when the anthology was published. At the same time, Allen's anthology established the United States as the center and the source of innovative anglophone poetry, despite the fact that such poetry was being written in numerous English-speaking countries during the post-war period. The origins and the legacy of this important anthology are complex, and have deep resonances in the way we think about poetry even today. Considering these facts, the time is right for a critical reexamination of The New American Poetry, utilizing information about the Cold War that has only recently come to light, as well as new ways of thinking about national and transnational literature which...
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Free of Inhibitions and Full of Pleasure: The Image of Europe in the Works of James Salter
Císlerová, Magdalena ; Delbos, Stephan (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
This thesis is concerned with the analysis of the image of Europe in the novels of James Salter, namely A Sport and a Pastime (1967), Light Years (1975), Solo Faces (1979) and All That Is (2013), while also taking into account Salter's memoir Burning the Days (1997). In Salter's fiction and non-fiction, Europe is presented as a place of freedom, culture, tradition, romance and possibilities, to which all of Salter's main characters - and Salter himself - are drawn at some stage in their lives, often at turning points. The journey to Europe serves various functions: it provides education and enables release from the domestic environment through a metaphorical conquest of the Continent. This thesis explores the motivations of Salter's characters for the journey, their expectations, as well as their actual experience, and the impact of their experience in Europe within the framework of the tradition of American writing in Europe, particularly modernism, with whose adherents Salter shares not only a similar notion of Europe, and particularly Paris as the cultural capital, but also a similar outlook on life, and a number of important themes and stylistic features. In positioning Salter as a belated modernist this thesis draws on Pascale Casanova's theory of the workings of the literary world expressed...
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Us and Them: Presenting America 1948-1956
Zezuláková Schormová, Františka ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
1 Abstract This MA thesis discusses contemporary US literature in Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1956 in order to see how the US was represented through the chosen American writers and their works. The first two chapters look at how the parallel canon was established, both from historical and theoretical perspective. The third chapter discusses Langston Hughes as the representative of American poetry. It shows how Hughes was used to draw attention to racial inequality in the US. Howard Fast as the superstar of the "Czechoslovak America" is the focus of the fourth chapter. The cases of both Fast and Hughes show that contemporary US authors published in Czechoslovakia at that time were chosen for the way they depicted the US racial and social inequality and the repression of political opposition, and identified themselves as members of the so called progressive America. Reading Hughes and Fast from the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain contributes to Czech scholarship on the 1950s and adds new perspectives to the contemporary reconsiderations of American leftist writers.
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Issues of translation in Miroslav Holub's poetry
Prunarová, Markéta ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Delbos, Stephan (referee)
Miroslav Holub, the most translated of twentieth-century Czech poets, has an integral place in Anglophone literature, yet he has received little attention from Czech literary critics. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to shed light on questions that arise from this singular situation. First and foremost, in what ways and for what reasons has Holub's poetry become an integral part of the Anglophone tradition and what artistic features allowed its consolidation? This thesis explores the aspects of Holub's poems and of the cultural and political contexts that helped the positive reception of his work abroad. Since Holub's poetry engaged with the British and American literary tradition in its translated version, the main focus of this thesis is on the differences and similarities between the dynamics of Holub's oeuvre in the original and in English. The first part of the thesis introduces Holub's poetry from the Czech point of view. The genealogy of his work is outlined in its broader literary and social circumstances, especially within the context of the Poetry of the Everyday. To understand this context, a part of this chapter is dedicated to his biography. The core of the second chapter is the description of Holub's poetic language. This aims to determine whether such a language is suitable or...
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