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Melancholic souls. Social dysfunction and social phobias in Czech literature at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries
Řezníková, Lenka
This study deals with the presentation of social dysfunction in 1890s Czech Decadent literature. At a time when other literary movements were highlighting mass society and crowd behaviour as a topos, neo-Romantic, Decadent and Symbolist literature was reflecting extreme forms of individualism. The staging of pathological anxieties here became part of a broad contemporary debate over the relationship between individualism and a modernising, consumerist, conformist and manipulable society, which was also subject of contemporary psychology under various headings during and especially at the end of the 19th century. Pathological individualism was not presented in neo-Romantic, Decadent and Symbolist literature either as something people are obliged to choose, or as a goal of emancipatory endeavours, but as a condition to which some individuals are “condemned” as a result of uncontrollable, e.g. genetic, factors.
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The Eternal Boyhood of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic
Kolařík, Karel ; Vojtěch, Daniel (advisor) ; Lishaugen, Roar (referee) ; Merhaut, Luboš (referee)
The thesis attempts to describe the life and work of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic through an analysis of his lifestyle, i.e. the way in which he organized, embellished and individualized his life. Karásek sought to shape his existence as an artwork, in accordance with the inspirational concepts of the contemporary and antecedent thinkers and artists (e.g. Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater and Maurice Maeterlinck). He accented its integrity and orientation towards beauty. In accord with his aesthetic vision (and his literary work) Karásek conditioned beauty with sadness and pain and attempted to emphasize melancholic beauty, unity in disunion. For that purpose he would accentuate particularly the disintegrative, critical elements, evoking the impression of unsuccessful, self-destructive endeavor to reach life's high ideal. This corresponded with his tragic concept of the artist immolating himself for his Art. I approach Karásek's lifestyle through the use of the terms youth and (eternal) boyhood, which Karásek himself employed as symbols of mournfully beautiful existence in his literary work. I define a youth - in accordance with the romantic and symbolist interpretation - as a person at odds with reality (contemporary truths, customs and rules), a solitary, unique being, trying to construct a new world - only...
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Protagonist in Gabriele D'Annunzio's Rose Trilogy
Richterová, Daniela ; Flemrová, Alice (advisor) ; Čaplyginová, Olga (referee)
In this thesis we will focus on D'Annunzio's Novels of the rose cycle, on the character analysis of its protagonists in the light of the specific social-historical interpretation of fin-de- siècle period. After a short introduction dedicated to life and work of the author, we will analyse the three novels with the aid of the works of literary criticism in a way that the major themes and specific characteristics of the novels emerge in their comparative interpretation based on the perspective of significance of the author's work in italian and european literature at that time. In conclusion we will consider the possibility of alternative solutions to decadence for D'Annunzio's protagonists which will bring our discussion into philosophical debate about crisis of misguided european rationalism, the crisis related to the problem of dissolution of subject of identity.
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Karel Kamínek as a Prose Writer
Brázdová, Kateřina ; Merhaut, Luboš (advisor) ; Heczková, Libuše (referee)
The thesis deals with short proses of Karel Kamínek - author of Modern revue circuit. The first part is dedicated to environment of Czech decadency in 19th and 20th centuries, its French roots and European sources of inspiration. The second part deals with the person of Karel Kamínek itself. It begins with basic biographical data and presents selected projects in which Kamínek participated. The third part analyses the author's short proses. We focus on Dies Irae and other stories and on Disonance also on short stories published in magazines. We approach Kamínek's work chronologically; divide it into sections with related poetics, while respecting the framework of book units. Selected short stories are closer discussed. The aim is to remind forgiven author, try to determine the specifics of his prose, capture its development and to put his work into the context of Czech literature.
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Death as an artifact: aesthetisation of death in works of Georges Rodenbach and Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic
Zvoníčková, Michaela ; Vojvodík, Josef (advisor) ; Hrdlička, Josef (referee)
The aim of the submitted thesis is a comparison of symbolism of a double in Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-Morte and Romány tří mágů of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic. We will focus maily on death as a key motif of literature at the fin de siècle and a motif that is, in works we are examining, closely linked with the existence of a double. We will inspect motif of a double in the context of psychological states of mind. The choice of compared texts was motivated by the process of self disintegration. The process of self disintegration is closely connected with the process of depersonalisation which appears when a subject makes contact with a soulful space or a object. Cities (Bruges, Venice, Prague) which are the scene of this self disintegration take a special place in the literature of symbolism as a urban space of art and death at once. Despite mutual relation of life and art, the strange tension, and the phenomenon of annihilation, is still present within this relation.
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Death as an artifact: aesthetisation of death in works of Georges Rodenbach and Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic
Zvoníčková, Michaela ; Vojvodík, Josef (advisor) ; Hrdlička, Josef (referee)
The aim of the submitted thesis is a comparison of symbolism of a double in Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-Morte and Romány tří mágů of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic. We will focus maily on death as a key motif of literature at the fin de siècle and a motif that is, in works we are examining, closely linked with the existence of a double. We will inspect motif of a double in the context of psychological states of mind. The choice of compared texts was motivated by the process of self disintegration. The process of self disintegration is closely connected with the process of depersonalisation which appears when a subject makes contact with a soulful space or a object. Cities (Bruges, Venice, Prague) which are the scene of this self disintegration take a special place in the literature of symbolism as a urban space of art and death at once. Despite mutual relation of life and art, the strange tension, and the phenomenon of annihilation, is still present within this relation.
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Allegory of fashion (Luisa Zikova's Case)
Chochrunová, Ivana ; Heczková, Libuše (advisor) ; Merhaut, Luboš (referee)
This bachelor thesis concentrates on the issue of the relationship of fashion and literature in the period of fin de siècle. The allegory of fashion, as it was brought to life by Charles Baudelaire in "The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays" and subsequently developed by Oscar Wilde, is one of the results of Luisa Zikova's analysis, the prematurely deceased writer of the 90s of the 19st century. This thesis follows the overall change in the literary methods based on the analyses of her short stories, both published and from estate, in the relation to categories of transiency and permanency, outside and inside, consciousness and unconsciousness. It will stem from the theoretical and historical principles of the Czech modernism of Petr Málek, Michal Topor, Robert Pynset and others.
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