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Renderings of the Self: The Theme of Fluid Identity in the Work of Jackie Kay
Stehlíková, Anežka ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Poncarová, Petra Johana (referee)
The bachelor thesis performs an analysis of the treatment of Scottish national and gender identity in selected poetry and fiction of the third modern Scots Makar, Jackie Kay (1961-), and argues that the author's works, regardless of genre, portray identities as self-invented and fluid rather than fixed and environment- or birth-determined. Kay's speakers, characters and narrators recurrently (re)construct their own identities, often in defiance of socially given norms, and, consequently, display one's ability to flexibly formulate own self-concept. The argumentation demonstrating the given depiction of identities is based on an examination of the poetry collection The Adoption Papers (1991), the novel Trumpet (1998), and the short story collection Why Don't You Stop Talking (2002) respectively. The analysis of Kay's poetry and fiction is preceded by the survey of the theoretical framework germane to the identity subcategories focused on in the thesis: Scottishness and gender identity. Conceiving both as social identities which, among other components, constitute an individual's self-concept, the overview provides the chief approaches to the formation of each identity category separately. Delimiting the civic, ethnic and cultural perception of Scottish national identity and the essentialist,...
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