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Postmodern Space in Contemporary British Fiction (Graham Swift)
MYKYTYN, Kristýna
The thesis aims to reflect on space in selected novels by contemporary British writer Graham Swift. The theoretical part of the thesis will first outline the social, political and literary situation of the 20th century and introduce the literary tools used in modern, postmodern and Contemporary British literature. Furthermore, the thesis deals with the change in the perception of space, the theory of postmodern chronotope, and besides Graham Swift, other most important writers of Contemporary British literature are introduced. The core of the thesis is a literary analysis of the space and landscape of the novels Waterland (1983) and Out of This World (1988). The aim is to compare the usage of postmodern elements and analyse the influence of history and landscape on the fate of the heroes of selected novels.
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The Place of the Forest in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Literary Sources, a Czech-French-English Perspective
Turek, Matouš ; Nejedlý, Martin (advisor) ; Woitsch, Jiří (referee)
The master thesis presents and analyses a range of different ways in which the motif of the forest was treated in late-medieval literary sources as an element of thematic and compositional construction of the text. At the theoretical basis of the thesis is the concept of diachronic text reception and adaptations which bring along the transmission and simultaneous transformation of the use of topoi, while this process is being related to the development of the literary chronotopos signalizing a change in the public's horizon of expectation. The majority of sources for analysis are drawn from Czech sources of the long 14th century - courtly and chivalric romance, the Old Czech verse legend of St. Procopius and the Dalimil Chronicle - while a shorter part of the thesis is devoted to the presentation of individual tendencies in the development of the use of the forest topos in English and French literary allegory of the 14th and 15th centuries. In detailed comparison of specific passages from Old Czech texts with their actual models in other languages (Old Middle German, Latin), the thesis demonstrates, upon the example of the forest topos, that topoi do not represent fixed, inalterable clichés, but actually exhibit intense shifts in function, content and theme.
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The Poetics of Space in The Alexandria Quartet.
Malý, Lukáš ; Bílek, Petr (advisor) ; Pokorný, Martin (referee)
Poetics of space in The Alexandria Quartet is created by multilevel structures. This poetics is closely connected to the main space of the story - Alexandria, which is at the same time one of the novel's topics. Each level is suggested in connection to various theoretical conceptions which are subsequently used for my own analysis. Alexandria is initially an aesthetic coulisse of the story which is portrayed by descriptive passages. Strongly subjective and lyrical descriptions of the city establish overall impression of the story and potentially support reader's experiential illusion. Alexandria and its specificity is further modulated and thematised by its special macroscopic conditions which border Alexandria as an autonomous fictional space with its own rules within the novel's fictional world. Part of poetics of the space in this novel is also portraying spatio-temporal aspect of the reality (chronotope) no only on the level of the story, but also on the level of storytelling. Alexandria is further explicit rhetoric and also through semantic indexation personified and enters semantic relations with the main characters and events. Each level is complementary to another and all are part of the semantic gesture of the novel. Alexandria becomes a separate symbol, mythical entity which importance is...
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Rhythmanalysis and the changes of the place: Rašín riverside embankment
Kravka, Jan ; Zandlová, Markéta (advisor) ; Lehečka, Michal (referee)
This thesis deals with the analysis of rhythms (Lefebvre 2004) at Prague's Rašín Embankment (náplavka Rašínova nábřeží). This thesis would also focus on the observation of the spatiotemporal changes of this place in a long term. I carried out qualitative interviews with actors who co-create the rhythms of this place with their managerial and entrepreneurial activities and added them to long-term continual visits and sensory perception of the place, along with the study of specialized historical publications. The analysis of the rhythms based on long-term participant observation was followed by an interpretation of what they actually tell us about everyday social reality of this place at specific times and how this space is produced by those rhythms. In this thesis I also used related concepts like chronotope (Crang, 2001; Osman, Mulíček, Seidenglanz, 2010, 2015) and chronopolis (Osman, Mulíček, Seidenglanz 2011, 2017). This thesis shows that nowadays the eurhythmia of this place is created by non- disruptive movement of local visitors such as walkers, runners and cyclists along the embankment, by regularly organized farmers' market and other events as well as by the flow of the Vltava river and its rhythms, by all means of transport on the local roads, bridges and the Vltava river. From the...
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The role of the narrative space in psychological novel - Vlčí jáma and Helimadoe
Valešová, Markéta ; Kubíček, Tomáš (advisor) ; Mocná, Dagmar (referee)
This thesis deals with the ways to create narrative space and its function in two novels of psychological fiction: 'Vlčí jáma' written by Jarmila Glazarová, and 'Helimadoe' by Jaroslav Havlíček. The narrative space is studied from the point of view of the relationship to the character, which is the central focus of psychological fiction. The first part of the thesis includes characteristics of respective characters based on the concept of chronotopes devised by Michail M. Bachtin. Following that, the thesis addresses the narrative approaches represented by theorists such as Marie-Laure Ryan, who focuses on cognitive maps as mental models of spatial relations, and Gabriel Zoran. Particular focus is devoted to the spatial frames put forward by Ruth Ronen, which can be used to observe all characteristics of narrative space. The thesis evaluates the possibilities of narrative space analysis for the interpretation of the selected works of psychological fiction, and compares the contribution of the different approaches to the research of narrative space. KEYWORDS Helimadoe, Vlčí jáma, narrative space, chronotope, Michail M. Bachtin, spatial frame
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Space-time breakdown in Julio Cortázar's fantastic tales
Krejčová, Veronika ; Poláková, Dora (advisor) ; Škodová, Denisa (referee)
As the title may reveal, my work will focus on space-time breakdowns in Julio Cortázar's (1914-1984) oeuvre. This Argentinian writer's work is centered mainly on the fantastic genre, specifically on tales. He is one of the most important representants of this genre in the zone of Río de la Plata, although for the most of his life he lived in Paris, where also many of his works were written. With help of other literary critics and theorists, I will try to define the space-time breakdowns in his creation. Tzvetan Todorov in his The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, distinguishes between three main categories: the strange, the fantastic and the marvelous. Another critic, Ana María Barrenechea, in her a little bit more vital theory divides the fantastic into these three categories: the natural, the unnatural and the mixture of both. As an example I will use four of Cortázar's tales. On those, I will apply the mentioned theories, nevertheless I will also point out the possible lack of clarity and obsolescence in them and will try to offer some new alternative solutions. David Roas, Spanish critic of fantastic literature, will be a great help. Is the space or time important in the literature? And what is that Cortázar's Fantastic feeling? I'll try to answer these questions and...
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The City of Copenhagen as a Topos in Contemporary Danish Literature
Stanjurová, Martina ; Březinová, Helena (advisor) ; Humpál, Martin (referee)
(in English): he aim of the thesis is to analyze the City of Copenhagen as a topos in contemporary Danish literature taking the example of the literary work of two contemporary Danish authors, Jan Sonnergaard and Katrine Marie Guldager. In the first chapter the authors and their short story collections (Kobenhavn and the Radiator trilogy) are briefly introduced. At the theoretical level, the work deals with the structure of the literary space, the literary concepts of topos and chronotope. A separate chapter discusses the depictions of urban space in literature based on the ideas of Daniela Hodrova. The interpretive part focuses on the specifics of each of the authors and the procedures which are used for this purpose, eg. the motif of meeting other people and moving around the city at Guldager. At Sonnergaard, there is a noticeable difference between the center and the periphery and between the changes in urban structure. The authors consistently show Copenhagen as a dynamic city, which is, however, showing signs of provinciality.
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The Poetics of Space in The Alexandria Quartet.
Malý, Lukáš ; Bílek, Petr (advisor) ; Pokorný, Martin (referee)
Poetics of space in The Alexandria Quartet is created by multilevel structures. This poetics is closely connected to the main space of the story - Alexandria, which is at the same time one of the novel's topics. Each level is suggested in connection to various theoretical conceptions which are subsequently used for my own analysis. Alexandria is initially an aesthetic coulisse of the story which is portrayed by descriptive passages. Strongly subjective and lyrical descriptions of the city establish overall impression of the story and potentially support reader's experiential illusion. Alexandria and its specificity is further modulated and thematised by its special macroscopic conditions which border Alexandria as an autonomous fictional space with its own rules within the novel's fictional world. Part of poetics of the space in this novel is also portraying spatio-temporal aspect of the reality (chronotope) no only on the level of the story, but also on the level of storytelling. Alexandria is further explicit rhetoric and also through semantic indexation personified and enters semantic relations with the main characters and events. Each level is complementary to another and all are part of the semantic gesture of the novel. Alexandria becomes a separate symbol, mythical entity which importance is...
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The Place of the Forest in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Literary Sources, a Czech-French-English Perspective
Turek, Matouš ; Nejedlý, Martin (advisor) ; Woitsch, Jiří (referee)
The master thesis presents and analyses a range of different ways in which the motif of the forest was treated in late-medieval literary sources as an element of thematic and compositional construction of the text. At the theoretical basis of the thesis is the concept of diachronic text reception and adaptations which bring along the transmission and simultaneous transformation of the use of topoi, while this process is being related to the development of the literary chronotopos signalizing a change in the public's horizon of expectation. The majority of sources for analysis are drawn from Czech sources of the long 14th century - courtly and chivalric romance, the Old Czech verse legend of St. Procopius and the Dalimil Chronicle - while a shorter part of the thesis is devoted to the presentation of individual tendencies in the development of the use of the forest topos in English and French literary allegory of the 14th and 15th centuries. In detailed comparison of specific passages from Old Czech texts with their actual models in other languages (Old Middle German, Latin), the thesis demonstrates, upon the example of the forest topos, that topoi do not represent fixed, inalterable clichés, but actually exhibit intense shifts in function, content and theme.
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