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The Talking Dead: An Exploration of the Graveyard as a Literary Device in Máirtín Ó Cadhain's Graveyard Clay and George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo
Rogan, Patrick ; Markus, Radvan (advisor) ; Theinová, Daniela (referee)
in English The intent of this thesis is a comprehensive comparison between Máirtín Ó Cadhain's novel Cré na Cille and George Saunders's novel Lincoln in the Bardo. A particular emphasis is placed on both Ó Cadhain and Saunders's use of the literary device of 'voices in the graveyard' as a method of depicting an entire community. The first chapter focuses on the afterlives portrayed in each novel - Saunders's fantastical reimagining of the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the bardo is contrasted against Ó Cadhain's metaphysical, yet nearly nonreligious afterlife. The second chapter uses Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of heteroglossia to analyze the language used by the characters in both novels. The third chapter begins by providing historical background on the settings of each novel (Cré na Cille takes place during World War II and Lincoln in the Bardo is set during the early days of the Civil War), before exploring how some of each of the text's major characters fit within those specific epochs. The thesis then summarizes the key reasons that the device of 'voices in the graveyard' can serve as an ideal means of portraying a community in toto. In conclusion, the thesis briefly investigates Edward Mendelson's idea of the encyclopedic narrative and where Cré na Cille and Lincoln in the Bardo fit within this...
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Religion and Spirituality in Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are you
Málková, Daniela ; Theinová, Daniela (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
Thesis Abstract Although Eimear McBride and Sally Rooney seem to have little in common in terms of their writing style and themes, they share a critical outlook on the influence that Catholic Church has had on generations of Irish people. Religion is not a prevalent theme in their work, but their characters are to an extent influenced by the legacy of Irish Catholicism and while McBride has a negative approach to her main character's faith, Rooney engages in debate whether Catholic faith is feasible in the twenty-first century or not. They both have an original approach to storytelling and language use and in many respects break traditional novelistic conventions. This thesis examines how McBride and Rooney combine religion with politics (and psychology) in their writings, how Ireland's religious history influences them, and how the formal elements of their prose work in harmony with their narrative strategies. The second chapter focuses on McBride and her exceptional use of the stream of consciousness. While she was not even close to being the first to use it, McBride made fragmented nature of this narrative technique her own. The degree to which the expression becomes chaotic and syntax distorted, alternates between various parts of the text, which highlight how the main character, Girl, who remains...
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Magic in Christopher Whyte's Novels
Karlasová, Markéta ; Poncarová, Petra Johana (advisor) ; Theinová, Daniela (referee)
Thesis Abstract While the Gaelic poetry of Scottish critic, translator, and novelist Christopher Whyte (1952) has received both critical attention and acclaim, his four English-language novels to date are generally less known and studied. All Whyte's novels deal with the themes of gender, queerness, and challenging heteronormativity, with magic also featuring prominently in three of his four works. The focus of this thesis is on the three novels that present magic and fantastic elements as an important part of their plot: Euphemia MacFarrigle and the Laughing Virgin, The Warlock of Strathearn and The Cloud Machinery. The objective of this work is to give an overview of the magical elements and their use in each of the novels with focus on the integral topics of identity, gender and sexuality, while also aiming to explore the theme of the fantastic in each of them. To examine the element of the fantastic in each novel and provide a theoretical framework for the research, this thesis employs the 1975 English edition of Tzvetan Todorov's survey The Fantastic: A Structuralist Approach to a Literary Genre. The thesis is structured into three integral chapters, each focusing on one of the chosen novels, exploring the origin, use and limitations of magic in the specific novel. The thesis presents an overview of...
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Fiction and Truth in Jeanette Winterson's Novels
Zunová, Eliška ; Theinová, Daniela (advisor) ; Poncarová, Petra Johana (referee)
(EN) Stories in Jeanette Winterson's novels have a dual function: on the one hand, canonical narratives can be agents of oppression, rigidity, and the perpetuation of norms and biases; on the other, storytelling can be a force of freedom, self-actualization, and agency. In this thesis, I have analysed three novels from different parts of the author's career - namely Sexing the Cherry (1989), The Stone Gods (2007), and Frankissstein (2019) - reading them alongside some of her other works, to explore how Winterson works with stories and storytelling both as a thematic and structural element, and how she uses them to comment on the relationship between what is invented and what is true. My main focus was on how the two key concepts of "fiction" and "truth" influence each other in Winterson's writing. I argue that these two categories are not contradictory in the author's conception; she repeatedly stresses not only that fiction has the capacity to express truths, but that it can do so more efficiently than rigid adherence to facts. In addition, the author draws a distinction between "the real" and "the true," where the former generally refers to the empirical reality, the outside world that we tend to mediate by discourses of realism and rationalism, and the latter can be understood as that which is...
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The Weekend of Dermot & Grace: Eugene R. Watters' Long Modernist Poem
Světlík, Martin ; Markus, Radvan (advisor) ; Theinová, Daniela (referee)
The oeuvre of the Irish poet, novelist, playwright and essayist Eugene Rutherford Watters (later publishing under the name Eoghan Ó Tuairisc), who wrote both in English and Irish, has been mostly neglected by literary criticism. This thesis focuses on Watters' ambitious long modernist poem The Week-End of Dermot and Grace (1964), which has so far received only perfunctory critical treatment. Formally, The Week-End shows clear affinities with the works of high modernism (especially with the poetry of T.S. Eliot), especially in terms of poly- and multivocal qualities of Watters' overtly allusive language and the liberal employment of wide-ranging intertextual references. On the thematic level, the poem centres around Watters' preoccupation with the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6th August 1945 by the American forces, a momentous event that impelled the poet to questions about faith, civilisation, technology, and collective guilt in the context of the Irish neutral stance during the Second World War. Reflections on Hiroshima also led him to contemplate the role of the poet and poetry in the modern "atomic age". Given the aforementioned qualities of the work, the method chosen for the analysis consists of a close reading of the poem in the light of the historical, literary, and...
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"The ground possessed and repossessed": The Trope of the Feminized Land in Seamus Heaney's North
Hezinová, Adéla ; Markus, Radvan (advisor) ; Theinová, Daniela (referee)
- propaganda tract "Echtra mac nEchach Muigmedóin" ("The Mugmedón"), the vision in Aodhagán Ó Rathaille's "Gile na Gile" ("The Glamoured"), and the sorrowful mother lamenting being abandoned by her children in Patrick Pearse's "Mise Éire" ("Ireland"). This thesis focuses on how t second part of the thesis focuses on Seamus Heaney's poetry collection illuminates the relationship between Heaney's poetry and the politics and history of Ireland. The aim of this thesis is to offer a new perspective on Heaney's poems by examining the parallels between the trope's form in older texts and Heaney's innovations and modifications of the trope. In three parts, Heaney's complex metaphors are analyzed: "Antaeus", "Hercules and Antaeus" and "Bone Dreams" are explored - "Come to the Bower", "Bog Queen", "Punishment", and "Kinship", which offer us the trope is its most archetypal form. The last - "Ocean's Love to Ireland", "Aisling", "Act of Union" and "The Betrothal of Cavehill". In the third part, the thesis touches upon the feminist critique of Heaney's poems, as became a focus of many critics' work, including
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Society and Solitude in Mary Lavin's Short Stories
Trompak, Kateryna ; Theinová, Daniela (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
Thesis Abstract It is hard to safely locate Mary Lavin in the critical discourse as for many decades she has been subject to various approaches concerning her categorisation. Even though Mary Lavin lists as an Irish writer, she was considered apolitical in her works which led to her problematic "exclusion" from the Irish literary tradition. Her works were not always considered feminist in a contemporary sense and have only been placed in a feminist framework with mixed success. This thesis deals with the issue of her placement in the Irish canon and feminist critical literature, aiming to prove that Lavin's significance in both discourses is possible due to her realistic portrayal of universal human traits and issues associated with the life of the Irish middle-class, its traditions and conventions, with a particular attention paid to womanhood and its ordeals. This is achieved by focusing on the prominent notion of solitude in the social space primarily exemplified in the female characters of her stories. While social space is incompatible with the typical concept of solitude as the physical absence of other people, what is relevant in terms of Lavin's short stories are the states of social disengagement, such as mental loneliness and alienation used as a way of detachment of oneself from other human...
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Far from Peace: The Images of Space and Domesticity in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian and Leontia Flynn
Nováková, Lucie ; Theinová, Daniela (advisor) ; Wallace, Clare (referee)
1 ABSTRACT Key words: Northern Irish poetry, Leontia Flynn, Medbh McGuckian, domesticity, domestic space, the Troubles, post-Agreement poetry The aim of the thesis is to observe the Northern Irish conflict from the vantage point of domestic space as it is reflected in Northern-Irish poetry of the last 40 years. The thesis builds on the notion that houses and homes are not simply private places but images of the outside world. To illustrate this premise, the works of two Northern Irish poets have been selected: Medbh McGuckian and Leontia Flynn. Divided by time, but not space, their poetry is to be placed into the context of Northern Irish poetry during the Troubles and the post-Agreement period. McGuckian's poetry is engaged with making a sense of the distinction between public and private spheres (Wills 1993), whereas Flynn's poetry, and post-Agreement poetry in general, shows signs of attempts to discover and establish her place within the context of the Troubles. In formulating her stance, Flynn relies on a perspective gained by leaving home and memories of growing up during the Troubles behind and travelling abroad (Heidemann 2016). Both poets write about the Troubles in light of the division between private and public spheres, thus illustrating how the violent politics have been part of Northern Irish...
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Swans and Contradictions in the Poetry of W. B. Yeats
Červený, Lukáš ; Theinová, Daniela (advisor) ; Quinn, Justin (referee)
William Butler Yeats's 1919 collection The Wild Swans at Coole marked a transition in his poetry: from early songs rooted in Romanticism, the poet moves towards a style influenced by Modernism. Even though it is beneficial to examine Yeats's work in relation to the two major literary movements, it is necessary to bear in mind that his stance towards both remained problematic. This stylistic ambiguity is apparent in the collection's title poem and its central paradox: the poet's depiction of swans contains aspects of Romanticism and Modernism alike, yet it resists clear classification. Furthermore, swans feature here not only as poetic symbols, but also as physical bodies. Similar contradictory tendencies appear in Yeats's "Leda and the Swan". In this later poem from The Tower (1918), the poet emphasizes the symbolic value as well as the physical features of the animal. The swan as a beautiful rapist in "Leda and the Swan" also prompts a feminist reading, bringing us to the dichotomy between the poet and woman as object. This dichotomy is put on display in the last poem I discuss in detail, "Coole and Ballylee, 1931". In it, Yeats thematizes not only his life, but also his work and his relationship with the swans as mirrors of inevitable alienation. Chapters one and two trace the influence of the...
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