The story of Gilgamesh has been viewed as an example of several different narrative genres. This thesis establishes how scholarship in English published between 1872 and 1967 has described Gilgamesh as a myth, or denied Gilgamesh status as a myth and discusses new the meanings that the context of myth brings to the story. This thesis represents preliminary work on a larger project of exploring present day artistic meaning making efforts that revolve around Gilgamesh.

Beowulf is preserved in a single manuscript written out around the year 1000, but there are many reasons to believe that the poem was composed several centuries before this particular act of manual reproduction. Most significantly, the meter of Beowulf reveals that the poet regularly observed distinctions of etymological length that became phonologically indistinct before 725 in Mercia. This dissertation gauges the explanatory power of the hypothesis that Beowulf was composed about three centuries before the production of the extant manuscript. The following studies test the hypothesis of archaic composition by determining whether it is able to accommodate independent forms of evidence drawn from the fields of linguistics, textual criticism, and literary history.

The story of Gilgamesh has been viewed as an example of several different narrative genres. This thesis establishes how scholarship in English published between 1872 and 1967 has described Gilgamesh as a myth, or denied Gilgamesh status as a myth and discusses new the meanings that the context of myth brings to the story. This thesis represents preliminary work on a larger project of exploring present day artistic meaning making efforts that revolve around Gilgamesh.

The aim of my project is to show how the lives, strategies and attitudes of Huguenot printers of the late sixteenth century both reflected and influenced the self-image of Protestant Europeans. Historians of the book such as Roger Chartier and Adrian Johns have argued that the process of printing includes several components which are easily overlooked by historians interested in exploring thoughts and attitudes. My project attempts to put these insights to practical use by demonstrating how printers were as integral to the process of reading as were readers and writers. I investigate the lives, social networks, and business strategies of a pair of successful Huguenot printers of Geneva, Jean Crespin and Eustache Vignon. My investigation shows how they relied on cooperative, international networks to practice their business and that this fostered a practical, cosmopolitan attitude among them. I then examine Jean Crespin’s most famous work, the Livre des Martyrs, showing how it supplied the needs of his readers for a sense of meaning an community. I show how this work changed over time in response to changing needs and circumstances, as seen most dramatically in the version which Eustache Vignon produced after his partner’s death. Finally, I examine how Vignon – along with other Protestant printers of his time – began to produce books about the New World. I argue that these New World Works, reflecting the printers’ cosmopolitan perspective, promoted a more ecumenical vision of Christianity and a universal ethic based on kindness and justice.

This diploma thesis deals with the role of biblical themes in the collection of poems The Legend of the Centuries by Victor Hugo. First chapter pursues selected aspects of the collection (humanistic values, conception of history, character and time aspects). The aim of the second chapter is to put the collection into the literary context of the concerned period (romantism, symbolism) and into the context of the author's philosophical and religious ideas. This part considers the relation among the collection, the myth and the psychoanalysis. Focus of the thesis lies in the third part that analyzes selected poems of the collection. These are classified according to the role of biblical aspects. The first type of Hugo's application of the biblical elements is represented by an opening poem of the collection "La Vision d'ou est sorti ce livre", which refers to the biblical stories, characters and themes via different poetic techniques. The second group of poems represents a direct updating of the biblical stories. The last type unifies the author's convictions with the biblical elements and recreates the so-called biblical poems. The aim of the thesis is to research this new type of myths that Victor Hugo creates throughout the biblical themes.

The diploma thesis consists of two main parts {--} theoretical and practical. The theoretical part deals with a character of collected tales with regard to a region and explains the meaning of the word ``legend{\crqq}. Furthermore it summrizes briefly what is an illustration and targets four illustrators of Old Czech Legends by Alois Jirásek (Věnceslav Černý, Antonín Procházka, Mikoláš Aleš and Jiří Trnka). At the conclusion of this part the illustration processing itself is inscribed. Creating a set of illustrations {--} the practical part {--} is the produce of the thesis. A supplement, that contains the set of collected legends, is added to the thesis.

M.A. / In this dissertation I aim to establish how Ovid uses the Rape of the Sabine Women, part of the foundation myth of Rome, in the Ars Amatoria I: 101-134 to maintain or restructure male-female relationships within Roman patriarchal society. Furthermore, Ovid's legacy in the Middle Ages and our modem society is briefly looked at. This myth tells that Romulus and his men had a shortage of women in their city as they were not considered suitable husbands by the men of the surrounding tribes. In response to the ridicule of their neighbours, Romulus held a celebration of the Consualia at which he and his men seized the Sabine maidens, who would later become their wives. A semiotic approach is used to understand how Ovid viewed existing male-female relationships and to what end he would like to restructure them. Ovid understood the strength of this myth and retold it in order to persuade his audience of his argument. In these lines Ovid explained to the student-lover how and why to meet a woman at the Theatre. Through the comparison of the ancient and the contemporary, his use of certain words and figures of speech, Ovid attempted to convince his audience of the effectiveness of the art of love he promoted: a contract of agreement between two willing partners created by persuasion rather than force. He displayed an amazing understanding of the human psyche, as well as the violent, angry nature of rape. Ovid's novel approach has affected authors of the Middle Ages, among them Geoffrey Chaucer, artists of the 'heroic rape' genre and can even be discussed in relation to modem rape myths and the modern concept of equity between the sexes introduced in the Ars already. His style and subject matter has caused the analysis of his work to be highly debated among many modem scholars. It is my conclusion that Ovid wrote the Ars Amatoria with the intention of restructuring male-female relationships in Roman society, promoting a movement away from violence and unfulfilling relationships, typical of the Roman marriage tradition. His work was so far reaching that he did not only create a stir among his contemporaries, but instead he influenced the development of the male-female relationship and interaction over centuries.

This essay is a study regarding the use of H.P. Lovecraft´s Shadow over Innsmouth, Richard Matheson´s I am Legend and Joel M. Sipress´s three step program when working along the theme of race in the classroom. The study supports the argument that it is possible to successfully incorporate these two Sci-fi/Horror novels in a pedagogical context when working with race. To further strengthen this argument I am going to look closer at three terms, which will serve as the essay´s theoretical focus points, and investigate how they can be used to explain the content of the works and their understanding of race. These three terms are racial identity, racial hierarchies and hybridity. I am going to discuss the possibilities regarding how and why one could practically apply the two novels when working with Joel M. Sipress´s three-step strategy in the classroom. The reason behind my decision to focus my essay on this is because I want to explore the possibility for meaningly using these less-mainstream genres in a pedagogical context.

This thesis deals with the character named Golem and its possible interpretations. The first chapter is aimed generally at artificial creations, a category Golem is often reckoned as a part of. Second chapter deals with the origin and the meaning of the word Golem. This chapter also lists down Golem's attributes and instructions for its creation. The following two chapters describe the typical concept of Golem as well as the archetype of a shadow and the motif of a double. C.G. Jung was dealing with the archetype of a shadow in detail while the issue of a double is based on the works by O. Fisher and D. Hoder. The fifth chapter is dedicated to the Prague Golem and its author Rabbi Löw. In addition to Czech legends, German ones are also included, namely the book Sippurim that served as a source of information used by many authors who had been influenced by the Golem theme. Following chapters analyse particular works of German literature. First it is the poem Die Geschichte von dem Golem by Ludwig Kalisch. Here, the theme of Golem is elaborated in a lyrical way. An analysis of A. von Armin's work named Isabella von Ägypten comes next. This work tells a story of Golem's wife who is a double of the main character Bella. In addition to these two works, an interpretation of the story called Der Sandmann...

Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à la conception et à la visualisation de cartes géographiques personnalisées en passant par des étapes d'évaluation et d'amélioration automatiques de ces cartes.Dans la plupart des outils cartographiques récents (comme le GeoPortail ou Google Maps) il est possible pour l'utilisateur de construire lui-même une carte adaptée à ses besoins à partir des couches de données pouvant provenir de sources hétérogènes. Cependant, la manipulation et l'édition de cartes par des utilisateurs non-experts peuvent engendrer des erreurs de représentation qui entravent la compréhension de cette carte par ses lecteurs.Notre recherche concerne donc l'amélioration de la représentation de cartes créées par des utilisateurs non-experts. Etant donné que la lisibilité d'une carte passe par la visibilité des objets qui la composent, dans ce travail nous proposons un modèle qui évalue la visibilité de ces objets cartographiques en se fondant sur un système de cinq indicateurs de visibilité dont les valeurs varient entre 0 et 1. Ce modèle prévoit ensuite quatre méthodes de modification de la symbolisation des objets cartographiques, qui seront utilisées afin d'améliorer leur visibilité. Entre l'étape d'évaluation et celle de l'amélioration de la visibilité de ces objets, une phase d'analyse est mise en place dans le but de décider si une amélioration de la symbolisation des objets cartographiques est nécessaire, et si oui, choisir lesquelles parmi ces modifications pourront être réalisées.Ce modèle prendra comme entrée une carte géographique sous la forme (1) d'un ensemble de couches composées chacune d'objets cartographiques, (2) et de la légende utilisée pour la symbolisation de ces objets cartographiques. Il donnera en sortie (1) un ensemble de fichiers xml qui contiennent les valeurs calculés des indicateurs de visibilité, (2) une carte finale avec une nouvelle symbolisation qui améliore la valeur des indicateurs de visibilité. Ce processus offre alors aux lecteurs une carte plus lisible.Ce travail est ensuite conclu par deux tests qui valident (1) les hypothèses de base, (2) la correspondance effective entre les valeurs des indicateurs et le ressenti réel des lecteurs de cartes, et qui tentent (3) de dégager des seuils de visibilité qui seront utilisés dans le but de corriger et affiner ultérieurement les algorithmes écrits lors de cette thèse / In this thesis, we focus on the design and visualization of custom geographic maps by executing different stages of automatic evaluation and improvement of these maps.In the most recent mapping tools (such as Google Maps or GeoPortail) it is possible for the user to build himself a map that suits his needs using different layers of data which can come from several sources. However, the manipulation and edition of maps by non-experts can cause errors in the representation that affects the understanding of this map by its readers.That's why our research focus on improving the representation of maps created by non-expert users. Since the readability of a map depends on the visibility of objects that compose this map, in this work we propose a model which assesses the visibility of cartographic objects based on a system of five indicators of visibility (values between 0 and 1). This model then provides four methods for modifying the objects symbolization of this map, which will be used to improve their visibility. Between the evaluation and the improvement of the visibility of these objects, an analysis step is performed in order to decide whether an improvement in the symbolization is required, and if so, which of these four methods should be executed.This model takes as input a map in the form of (1) a set of layers each consisting of cartographic objects, (2) and the legend used to represent these cartographic objects. It will generate as an output (1) a set of XML files that contain the values calculated by the indicators of visibility, (2) a final map with a new representation that improve the value of these indicators of visibility. This process then provides readers with a more readable map.This work is then concluded by two tests that validate (1) our basic assumptions, (2) the actual correspondence between the indicator values and the real feel of the map readers, and finally trying (3) to determine visibility thresholds that can be used later in order to correct and refine the algorithms that are proposed in this thesis