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Rethinking the Animal: Post-Humanist Tendencies in (Post) Modern Literature
Gridneva, Yana ; Vichnar, David (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee)
This thesis posits post-humanism as a philosophy that engages directly with the problem of anthropocentrism and is concerned primarily with the metaphysics of subjectivity. It studies five literary texts (James Joyce's Ulysses, Virginia Woolf's Flush, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Brigid Brophy's Hackenfeller's Ape and J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons) that challenge the humanistic or classical subject through critical engagement with what this subject traditionally saw as its antithesis - the animal. These texts contest various fixed assumptions about animality and disrupt the status-quo of the human. Breaking with the tradition that treats animals exclusively as a metaphor for the human, they attempt to see and understand animality outside the framework of anthropocentric suppositions. This project aims to describe the strategies these texts employ to conceptualize animality as well as the methods they apply to delineate its subversive potential and to disrupt the human- animal binary. Its theoretical framework combines the work of thinkers belonging to the new but thriving field of Animal Studies with the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is this project's great ambition to contribute towards the development of new post- humanist ethics defined by its...
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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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James Joyce and the science of mind - the approach of Cognitive Narratology to Dubliners
ZELENÁ, Lenka
This bachelor's thesis deals with the work of the Irish writer, James Joyce, called Dubliners and its relation to a modern scientific discipline Cognitive narratology. Its aim is to analyse and interpret chosen short stories in terms of the aforementioned discipline. The first part of the thesis introduces the reader to the life of James Joyce and ho his work. Then, the aspects of Cognitive narratology are defined, as they serve as a basic tool for the analysis and most importantly, for the interpretation. The second part deals with the narrative structure in the chosen stories ('The Sisters', 'Araby', 'Eveline', 'After the Race', 'A Little Cloud', 'A Painful Case', 'Grace', 'The Dead'). Apart from analysing the stories in terms of time, setting, point of view and other aspects, the study focuses on the relationships between the author, the characters, and the reader. Finally, there is a summary of the work with the methodology.
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The Avant-Postman: James Joyce, the Avant-Garde, and Postmodernism
Vichnar, David ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Pilný, Ondřej (referee) ; Symington, Micéala (referee)
The thesis, entitled "The Avant-Postman: James Joyce, the Avant-Garde and Postmodernism," attempts to construct a post-Joycean literary genealogy centred around the notions of a Joycean avant-garde and literary experimentation written in its wake. It considers the last two works by Joyce, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, as points of departure for the post-war literary avant-gardes in Great Britain, the USA, and France, in a period generally called "postmodern." The introduction bases the notion of a Joycean avant-garde upon Joyce's sustained exploration of the materiality of language and upon the appropriation of his last work, his "Work in Progress," for the cause of the "Revolution of the word" conducted by Eugene Jolas in his transition magazine. The Joycean exploration of the materiality of language is considered as comprising three stimuli: the conception of writing as concrete trace, susceptible to distortion or effacement; the understanding of literary language as a forgery of the words of others; and the project of creating a personal idiom as an "autonomous" language for a truly modern literature. The material is divided into eight chapters, two for Great Britain (from Johnson via Brooke-Rose to Sinclair), two for the U.S. (from Burroughs and Gass to Acker and Sorrentino) and three for France...
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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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Rethinking the Animal: Post-Humanist Tendencies in (Post) Modern Literature
Gridneva, Yana ; Vichnar, David (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee)
This thesis posits post-humanism as a philosophy that engages directly with the problem of anthropocentrism and is concerned primarily with the metaphysics of subjectivity. It studies five literary texts (James Joyce's Ulysses, Virginia Woolf's Flush, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Brigid Brophy's Hackenfeller's Ape and J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons) that challenge the humanistic or classical subject through critical engagement with what this subject traditionally saw as its antithesis - the animal. These texts contest various fixed assumptions about animality and disrupt the status-quo of the human. Breaking with the tradition that treats animals exclusively as a metaphor for the human, they attempt to see and understand animality outside the framework of anthropocentric suppositions. This project aims to describe the strategies these texts employ to conceptualize animality as well as the methods they apply to delineate its subversive potential and to disrupt the human- animal binary. Its theoretical framework combines the work of thinkers belonging to the new but thriving field of Animal Studies with the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It is this project's great ambition to contribute towards the development of new post- humanist ethics defined by its...
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