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Echoes of EOKA: A Literary Exploration of Simon Mawer's and Soulla Christodoulou's Cyprus
Orphanides, Tomáš ; Topolovská, Tereza (advisor) ; Chalupský, Petr (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to examine the accuracy and the manner of depiction of the period of the EOKA struggle in Cyprus in Simon Mawer's Swimming to Ithaca (2006) and Soulla Christodoulou's The Summer Will Come (2018). The theoretical part of the thesis examines the events between 1878 and 1959, a critical period in Cypriot history marked by British administrative control, substantial political transformations, and armed confrontation between the Greek Cypriots and the British. The practical part focuses on the analysis of the novels, investigating the impact of the EOKA campaign on the daily life, perspectives and the coexistence of Greek Cypriot and British communities. The thesis also explores themes related to the Greek Cypriot and British personal relationships and the Greek Cypriot experience of migration and settling in England. In conclusion, the novels are compared and contrasted based on the objectives, providing a comprehensive analysis of the literary interpretation of the period. KEY WORDS postcolonial literature, modern Cypriot history, British colonial rule, EOKA campaign, Enosis, Greek Cypriot identity, contemporary British historical fiction, Simon Mawer, Soulla Christodoulou, migration and settlement, socio-political tensions, philhellenism, colonial heritage, coexistence of...
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Developing Critical Literacy: Postcolonial Literature in English Lessons at Upper Secondary Schools
Helebrant, Šárka ; Mikuláš, Martin (advisor) ; Dvořák, Bohuslav (referee)
The thesis aims to present the use of postcolonial literature in pursuance of developing critical literacy in English lessons of upper secondary schools, together with increasing the awareness of the postcolonial world, South Africa specifically. The theoretical part of the thesis concentrates on contemporary knowledge in the field of methodology of teaching literature, reading strategies, and critical literacy, including its development and assessment. Furthermore, the theoretical section establishes the environment for the practical part, which consists of qualitative research in a Czech upper secondary school and employs pretesting, intrinsic research, teacher's and students' assessment, and final achievement test. The research implies that critical literacy is viewed differently with respect to different experts and various fields. Furthermore, the research indicates that the assessment of critical literacy is built mainly on assumptions of the specialists interested in this field and no standardised or unified tests are available. Lastly, the research shows that postcolonial literature seems to be an optimal source for enhancing students' critical literacy since it incorporates similar themes as critical literacy. The thesis has explained that the use of postcolonial literature and relevant...
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The portrayal of the Windrush generation in Andrea Levy's Small Island and Samuel Selvon's The Lonely Londoners
Hemžalová, Simona ; Topolovská, Tereza (advisor) ; Chalupský, Petr (referee)
The diploma thesis is concerned with the portrayal of the Windrush generation, the first wave of immigrants coming to Britain from its former colonies, in Andrea Levy's Small Island (2004) and Samuel Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956). The theoretical part of the thesis outlines the socio-historical and cultural overview of the rising immigration to Britain after the Second World War, which according to the selected secondary sources contributed to the increase of racism and discrimination, namely against people of Caribbean origin. The thesis further presents principal concepts of postcolonial and Anglophone Caribbean literature and examines both authors' personal experience with immigration as well as the idiosyncratic features of their writing. These are essential for understanding the literary works of the selected authors and the subsequent interpretation of their literary depiction of the immigrant experience. The practical part of the thesis relies on the theoretical part and focuses on the comparison of the two novels, their presentation and view of the so-called Windrush generation with specific attention paid to their form and content. Simultaneously, the work examines how the literary depictions of the immigrant experience correspond to the theory presented. Moreover, the thesis...
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Albert CAMUS and Kamel DAOUD
Štancl, Martin ; Fučíková, Milena (advisor) ; Šarše, Vojtěch (referee)
The thesis analyses novels l'Étranger and Meursault, contre-enquête, which represent an example of literary dialogue reflecting problems associated with postcolonial society. The comparison of texts shows changes made by Kamel Daoud and the shifting values taking place in this transformation. Emphasis is placed on the characters, and especially on the onomastic system, to illustrate the main difference in the message of selected novels. The introduction focuses on contradictory public perception of writers and their native country, Algeria. The main part compares semantic differences of these two books. To strengthen the comparison, the word frequency analysis has been used and it showed important disproportions between both texts. The conclusion discusses the crucial role of language, which in both cases is divided into two contradictory categories that are the source of certain tension. The result of this work is an interpretation of Daoud's work, in which the possibilities of new interpretations of Camus's work also appear, partly thanks to the comparison with texts written by important postcolonial theoreticians. The issue of searching for identity, presented in the literature since time immemorial, derives from the contact of two different cultures and occupies a significant place in Daoud's...
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Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence through Reading Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider
Míková, Barbora ; Topolovská, Tereza (advisor) ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (referee)
This thesis concerns the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) through reading a work of postcolonial literature (The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, 2005) in an English class. The theoretical part explains notions such as intercultural communicative competence and culture. It also describes the benefits of reading in ELT. The practical part presents a project consisting of altogether twelve lessons dedicated to reading The Whale Rider. The aim of the project is to support the pupils' development of ICC, make them aware of other English-speaking cultures than just the traditionally presented ones and, last but not least, to develop their language skills. The outcome of the project is, besides the expected raised level of ICC, which is, however, hard to measure, a poster about Maori culture realized by the pupils. KEY WORDS intercultural communicative competence, postcolonial literature, reading, English language teaching, The Whale Rider
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Past, Present and Future in the Work of José Eduardo Agualusa
Niňajová, Alena ; Grauová, Šárka (advisor) ; Válová, Karolina (referee)
This study aims to analyze the aspect of national and cultural identity in the works of the contemporary Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa. This master‛s thesis contains a brief introduction to the history of Angola, the processes of shaping society and an introduction to Agualusa and his literary works. In addition to that ideas of postcolonial thinking and literary tendencies in postmodern times are discussed, which influenced the works of this writer. Furthermore, aspects of cultural identity and related views on human and historical memory are investigated. An analysis of selected works, demonstrates Agualusa's criticism concerning the political situation in Angola and his technique of using different concepts of Angolan identity. Keywords: Angola, Agualusa, identity, nationalism, literature, postcolonialism
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City as a fictional character in the postmodernist novel: Alexandria Quartet and The Moor's Last Sigh
Freimannová, Dominika ; Beran, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Clark, Colin Steele (referee)
in English This Bachelor thesis engages with the topic of a portrayal of the city in the postmodern novel which is then studied on the example of two chosen novels: Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell and The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. Both novels present the urban space as a female character with a strong influence upon the events and the formation of the protagonist's identity. The second chapter is dedicated to a theoretical framework which helps to establish what we can understand under the term modernist literature and it traces the basic features such a literature possesses. For this framework I adopted the study of postmodernism presented by the work of Linda Hutcheon, mostly her A Poetics of Postmodernism. A special attention is dedicated to the aspects of postmodernism that can be applied on the portrayal of space and the relationship existing between postmodernism and modernism. The third chapter outlines the basic concepts of space established by modernism. The major concepts dealt with in this thesis are: subjectivity, perspective, palimpsest and myth. As follows from the relationship between modernism and postmodernism, these concepts should be traceable also in postmodern fiction in a transformed state. According to Linda Hutcheon, the basic tool of this transformation is...
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Multicultural World in Zadie Smith's Recent Novels
GRENAROVÁ, Adéla
Initially, the diploma thesis introduces the overall context of contemporary AngloAmerican post-colonial literature and defines its fundamental postulates, such as ethnicity, cultural diversity, hybridity, globalization, and multiculturalism. Furthermore, the thesis briefly mentions several British authors of various ethnic background (Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie). The main aim of the thesis is to analyze Zadie Smith's three most recent novels (White Teeth, On Beauty, N-W) in the context of multicultural environment of contemporary Anglo-American world. The thesis further concentrates on author's narrative techniques, prevailing themes in the novels, the influence of English literary tradition, namely of E. M. Forster and David Lodge, and examines verbal and situational humor of the aforesaid novels.
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Dominican Immigrant Alienation in the Short Fiction of Junot Díaz/Odcizení dominikánských imigrantů v krátkých povídkách Junota Díaze
FLACHOWSKÁ, Lenka
This diploma thesis deals with a literary analysis of the collection of short stories by an American-Dominican author Junot Díaz. The central subject of his work Drown is the problematic of immigration mainly from the Dominican Republic to the United States. This diploma thesis is focused on a detailed study of the alienting consequences caused by the uprooting of characters from their Dominican culture and nation but at the same time by the effort to assimilate with the new culture, in this case with the culture of the United States. Each of the ten stories of the collection of short stories Drown is separately evaluated and subsequently the possible causes of the alienation are deduced. Alienation is not only restricted to the culture and nation, but it also plays an important role in considering conflicts within the family members. Secondly, the thesis analyses the matter of not being able to adapt to the new environment. For a broader scope of all the probable causes and manifestations of the alienation, another three short stories by Junot Díaz published in The New York Time are added to for the analysis. Junot Díaz repeatedly mentions some of the poingnant historical events of the Dominican Republic. For better orientation, the brief history of the Dominican Republic as well as the major points of the U.S.-Dominican relations are included in this diploma thesis. The introduction also consists of biographical information about Junot Díaz and short theory of postcolonial literature.
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