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Colonial thinking of Czech travellers at the juncture of teh 19th and 20th centuries
Rychnovská, Anna ; Soukup, Martin (advisor) ; Maňák, Vratislav (referee)
The subject of this diploma thesis is to look at the journalistic work of Czech travelers at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries through postcolonial theory, using the example of orientalist Alois Musil. It draws primarily on the psychoanalytic reflections of Frantz Fanon, the essays of Aimé Césaire, and Edward W. Said's conception of orientalism. The subject of the thesis is also to look at Czechoslovakia's "colonialism without colonies", especially through two theories: the non-colonial orientalism of Sara Lemmen and the colonial exceptionalism of Filip Herza. The intention of the thesis is also to mention the history of Czechoslovak colonialism, which forms the context of Musil's work, and to summarize research that focuses on the Czechoslovak image of colonies and the colonized. These serve, among other things, as a point of comparison with the results of the analysis of this thesis. The main aim of the thesis is to find out whether Alois Musil's journalistic work contains stereotypes of colonial thinking, or what specific stereotypes are involved. Critical discourse analysis is used to analyze Alois Musil's newspaper articles, with the aim of critically focusing on the power relations in society that both shape and are shaped by discourse. The aim is to highlight the limiting meanings of...
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Development of the concept of liminality in selected works of Salman Rushdie
Švejdík, Jan ; Chalupský, Petr (advisor) ; Ženíšek, Jakub (referee)
The core of this thesis is capturing the concept of liminality in the past works of Salman Rushdie, specifically in novels The Satanic Verses, The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Selected characters and motifs of these novels reflect autobiographical elements, thus the aim of the thesis is to describe the transformation of the concept of liminality in chronological progression, where these novels represent three periods in which the author's perception of home and migration differ substantially from one another. The phenomenon of liminality is described within the frame of postcolonial literary theory and attention is therefore paid to the notion of "other" in relation to home and its cultural specificities, as well as in relation to the migrant's new homeland. The analysis of these works and their abstraction into three representative periods form a frame of reference for comparison with possible future works of the author.
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Representation of (former) African colonies in 19th and 20th century domestic travel writing
Martinek, Adam ; Novotný, Josef (advisor) ; Šarše, Vojtěch (referee)
This diploma thesis analyzes 19th and 20th Czech language travel literature from (former) African colonies. The thesis is rooted in postcolonial theory - namely Osterhammel's synthesis of colonialism as a structure and an ideology, as well as Said's theory of orientalism. A key theoretical aspect of this work is Sarah Lemmen's updated notion of noncolonial orientalism, which arose out of her empirical work on Czech/Czechoslovak travel writing. Lemmen's concept addresses the specific standing of the Czech traveler vis-à-vis the colony, as they were not a representative of any world power, yet still exhibited orientalist views on colonies and the colonized. This work also pays special attention to the influence of socialist ideology on travel literature published between the years 1948 and 1989. The research questions which this work aims to answer are as follows: a) how is colonialism represented in Czech travel literature?, b) how is decolonization represented?, c) how do these travelogues portray Africans and their relationship to Europeans? These questions aim at understanding the authors' relationship with colonialism and orientalism as both ideology and practice which they encountered in Africa. The thesis consists of an analysis of nineteen of potential fifty-eight travelogues written by...
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Komparační studie čtyř romských životních příběhů
Ryvolová, Karolína ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Acton, Thomas (referee) ; Soukup, Daniel (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to do a comparative analysis of four Romany life-stories in prose from different parts of the world and identify features which may justly be called characteristic of Romany writing. The comparison of Victor Vishnevsky's Memories of a Gypsy, Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy and Gypsy Boy on the Run, Andrej Giňa's Paťiv. Ještě víme, co je úcta and Irena Eliášová's Naše osada yields valuable insights into how Romany writers construct their identity and to what extent their current work relates to the existing literary genres. Because of Romany studies' multidisciplinary nature, the extensive introduction lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis. I proceed from the characteristics of Romany studies in general in part 1.2 to the way it was practised during my undergraduate years in Prague as opposed to the Western tradition (part 1.3). Using a case study of the schism Romany studies are currently facing in the Czech Republic, in part 1.4 I attempt to illustrate the more general epistemological challenges the field has been grappling with between essentialist/primordialist and radical constructivist views. As there is a definite scarcity of theoretical literature conceptualising Romany writing, in part 1.5 of the introduction the existing body of work is assessed and found...
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Iraqi exile literature
Klasová, Pamela Markéta ; Ondráš, František (advisor) ; Oliverius, Jaroslav (referee)
This thesis examines the work of the contemporary exilic Iraqi author Ḥasan Blāsim within the framework of magical realism. At the same time it argues for a more formalistic and wider definition of magical realism, which also includes fiction without any supernatural elements. Magical realistic components found in the short story collection Majnūn sāḥat al-ḥurrīya (The Madman of Freedom Square) underline the most important themes in the stories. These are related to the catastrophes that afflicted Iraq and its people in the course of last thirty years. With its emphasis on the documentation of modern Iraqi history dominated by war and exile Blāsim's work belongs to the genre of documentary narrative. The goal of documentary narrative is to contribute to the collective memory of a nation. Despite Blāsim's focus on documenting, magical realism in his work cannot be considered as an attempt to create a parallel cultural world. The supernatural in his stories functions metaphorically and relates exclusively to the real world of war and violence, in which people under heavy circumstances turn into animals, cannibals, which is magical in itself. In addition, Blāsim's work is on a subordinate level discussed from the perspective of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory has undergone a complicated...
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Question of Identity in The Impressionist and Baumgartner' s Bombay
Sehnalová, Kamila ; Topolovská, Tereza (advisor) ; Chalupský, Petr (referee)
This diploma thesis aims to depict the nature of identity formation in the main characters of two works of postcolonial literature, Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist and Anita Desai's Baumgartner's Bombay. The concept of identity is approached from two perspectives, the traditional and the postcolonial one. Apart from that, the reactions of the two characters to their identity crises are scrutinized. The goal of this thesis is to determine what consequences the extreme implementation of a fluid, therefore ideal postcolonial identity, and the fixed one, as its extreme opposite, might have upon human lives. Special attention is paid to the three terms crucial in the postcolonial theory, liminality, hybridity and mimicry and how they predetermine the characters of the two novels. The analysis shows that neither extreme approach proves to be viable or beneficial for the life of an individual.
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Komparační studie čtyř romských životních příběhů
Ryvolová, Karolína ; Ulmanová, Hana (advisor) ; Acton, Thomas (referee) ; Soukup, Daniel (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to do a comparative analysis of four Romany life-stories in prose from different parts of the world and identify features which may justly be called characteristic of Romany writing. The comparison of Victor Vishnevsky's Memories of a Gypsy, Mikey Walsh's Gypsy Boy and Gypsy Boy on the Run, Andrej Giňa's Paťiv. Ještě víme, co je úcta and Irena Eliášová's Naše osada yields valuable insights into how Romany writers construct their identity and to what extent their current work relates to the existing literary genres. Because of Romany studies' multidisciplinary nature, the extensive introduction lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis. I proceed from the characteristics of Romany studies in general in part 1.2 to the way it was practised during my undergraduate years in Prague as opposed to the Western tradition (part 1.3). Using a case study of the schism Romany studies are currently facing in the Czech Republic, in part 1.4 I attempt to illustrate the more general epistemological challenges the field has been grappling with between essentialist/primordialist and radical constructivist views. As there is a definite scarcity of theoretical literature conceptualising Romany writing, in part 1.5 of the introduction the existing body of work is assessed and found...
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Iraqi exile literature
Klasová, Pamela Markéta ; Ondráš, František (advisor) ; Oliverius, Jaroslav (referee)
This thesis examines the work of the contemporary exilic Iraqi author Ḥasan Blāsim within the framework of magical realism. At the same time it argues for a more formalistic and wider definition of magical realism, which also includes fiction without any supernatural elements. Magical realistic components found in the short story collection Majnūn sāḥat al-ḥurrīya (The Madman of Freedom Square) underline the most important themes in the stories. These are related to the catastrophes that afflicted Iraq and its people in the course of last thirty years. With its emphasis on the documentation of modern Iraqi history dominated by war and exile Blāsim's work belongs to the genre of documentary narrative. The goal of documentary narrative is to contribute to the collective memory of a nation. Despite Blāsim's focus on documenting, magical realism in his work cannot be considered as an attempt to create a parallel cultural world. The supernatural in his stories functions metaphorically and relates exclusively to the real world of war and violence, in which people under heavy circumstances turn into animals, cannibals, which is magical in itself. In addition, Blāsim's work is on a subordinate level discussed from the perspective of postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory has undergone a complicated...
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