Le modèle formel de la variation sur thème, qui est célèbre surtout à cause de son emploi en tant que principe de composition musical – notamment pour les développements que y ont apporté des artistes comme Bach, Beethoven ou Schönberg -, toutefois n’épuise pas ses potentialités expressives exclusivement dans le cadre de cet art.Dans le roman, notamment, l’adoption du principe de composition nommé variation sur thème, qui implique la présentation du même thème (ou motif) par de perspectives différentes (que peuvent correspondre au point de vue des diverses personnages ou à la distance temporelle différente prise en rapport à la narration du même événement), semble se présenter comme un expédient idéalement fonctionnel à l’obtention de l’objectif cognitif le principal de cet art, qui concerne le dévoilement de la substantielle relativité de toutes les vérités apparentes. Alors que de romanciers tel que Milan Kundera ou Danilo Kiš, dans leurs œuvres, semblent avoir interprété le modèle des variations comme un principe fonctionnel à la réalisation d’une structure organique et unitaire, parfaitement concentrée autour du thème, dans d’autres romans contemporains, par exemple dans Si une nuit d’hiver un voyageur (1979) de Italo Calvino o dans Les variations Goldberg (1981) di Nancy Huston, les variations assument une disposition de type sériel.Dans ces derniers cas, la forme de la variation sur thème est utilisée, plutôt que comme un modèle de composition, comme un principe de désagrégation de la matière romanesque. / Theme and variation, a formal technique that is popular mainly through its applications within music, in particular thanks to contributions by artists such as Bach, Beethoven or Schönberg, nevertheless has expressive potentials that go beyond the boundaries of this art. In particular, it is in the novel that the use of variation as a composing principle, implying the presentation of a single central theme or motif by different perspectives (that may correspond to the point of view of different characters, or to different amounts of time elapsed from the actual happening of an event to its narration), seems to lend itself as the ideal device to achieve the main cognitive objective of this art, that is the unveiling of the substantial relativity of all things.While novelists such has Milan Kundera or Danilo Kiš seem to have developed, in their work, the theme and variation technique as a principle that is functional to an organic and uniform form of composition, ideally focused on a single theme, in other novels, such as If on a winter's night a traveler (1979) by Italo Calvino or Variations Goldberg (1981) by Nancy Huston, the variations are disposed so as to acquire a serial connotation. In those latter cases, the theme and variation technique is used as a functional principle for the disaggregation of the matter of the novel, rather than as a composition technique.

Ce mémoire vise à comparer la manière dont Witold Gombrowicz et Milan Kundera conçoivent la dialectique immaturité/maturité, afin de dégager la portée critique qu'elle comporte. Parce qu'ils mettent en scène des personnages qui éprouvent un sentiment de fascination-répulsion à l'égard de leur propre immaturité, et oscillent constamment entre un profond désir d'autonomie et un besoin viscéral d'adhérer à des formes établies, les romans Ferdydurke et La vie est ailleurs explorent les paradoxes de l'homme moderne: ne pouvant plus compter ni sur la transcendance ni sur des traditions ancestrales, ce dernier se retrouve piégé dans un monde qui lui semble de plus en plus énigmatique. Une étude comparative de la dialectique immaturité/maturité -sur les plans psychologique, anthropologique, poétique, biologique et socio-historique, -permet de découvrir le regard que ces romanciers centre-européens posent sur le monde moderne. Malgré les nombreuses similitudes existant entre l'oeuvre de Gombrowicz et celle de Kundera -ces derniers mènent un combat pour libérer l'écriture romanesque de tous les discours idéologiques et illusions esthétiques qui empêchent l'écrivain de rendre compte avec lucidité du monde réel -, il demeure que ces romanciers accordent une valeur différente aux notions d'immaturité et de maturité. D'une part, pour Gombrowicz, l'immaturité revêt deux significations opposées: la première, puisqu'elle traduit l'inaccomplissement naturel de l'homme, est synonyme d'anti-forme et devient un moteur de la subversion des lieux communs et des idées établies; la seconde, parce qu'elle est imposée par le monde extérieur et qu'elle camoufle tout ce qui est informe sous une fausse maturité, emprisonne l'homme dans une forme qui ne l'exprime pas totalement. D'autre part, chez Milan Kundera, l'immaturité désigne l'attitude de ceux qui, déterminés à gommer la complexité du monde, se créent un univers parallèle dans lequel les imperfections de la vie sont totalement évacuées, ou encore adhèrent à des mouvements idéologiques proposant une vision réductrice de la réalité. Au terme de notre recherche, il est permis d'affirmer que la principale différence existant entre la manière dont ces deux romanciers centre-européens conçoivent l'opposition entre l'immaturité et la maturité réside dans le fait que, contrairement à Gombrowicz qui estime que l'homme est à la fois immature et mature et s'efforce, notamment dans Ferdydurke, de rendre compte du chaos qui habite chaque individu, Kundera condamne avec véhémence tout ce qui a trait à l'immaturité et aspire à faire du roman le genre par excellence de la maturité. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Immaturité, Maturité, Roman, Modernité, Individu, Jeunesse.

Mémoire (M.A.)--Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, 2005. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.: f. 103-106. Également disponible en format microfiche et PDF.

Le rire et la mélancolie constituent l'ambiance dominante des romans de Milan Kundera. Ce sont les deux faces de son attitude vis-à-vis du narcissisme de l'homme reflété par ses personnages. Comme Narcisse, l'homme n'est jamais celui pour qui il se prend. Le narrateur présente cette vision kundérienne de l'homme, en racontant le comique et la misère des personnages. Comme le vécu de Kundera se reflète dans les situations des personnages, ce narrateur assume d'un côté une fonction d'autocritique. Mais d'un autre côté, ce narrateur reflète également le romancier, en prenant jusqu'au nom même de Kundera, et présente son image du romancier que croit être Kundera. Ainsi, Kundera lui-même n'est pas non plus hors de l'emprise narcissique. Néanmoins, le roman est le seul espace qui lui permet de méditer sa subjectivité narcissique en la relativisant. Pour Kundera, le roman permet d'échapper momentanément à la condition de Narcisse, grâce au jeu solitaire et sérieux de l'écriture dans les marges de l'hypothèse. / Laughter and melancholy constitute the dominant atmosphere of the novels of Milan Kundera. These are the two faces of his attitude about man’s narcissism and of which his characters are reflections. But man is never the person he thinks he is. Kundera expresses this vision of man through the narrators in his novels, who explore the comic and the miserable aspects of the characters appearing in them. Given the fact that the experience of Kundera is reflected in the characters’ situations, on one hand, the narrator endorses a function of self-criticism. On the other hand, this narrator reflects the novelist, sometimes taking even the name of Kundera himself, and presents his image of the novelist which Kundera believes himself to be. Therefore, Kundera is not free of narcissism. Nevertheless, the novel is the only place that allows him to ponder over his narcissistic subjectivity by the way of relativization. For Kundera, the novel enables him to escape momentarily the condition of Narcissus, by the solitary and serious game of writing in the margins of hypothesis.

Key Words: Comparatistics, Intertextuality, Essayism, Esem, Milan Kundera, Ričardas Gavelis, Laughter, Kitsch, Vulgarity, Carnevalism, Thanatos, Sexuality This comparativist thesis discusses the intelectual novel of the end of the 20th century. The study objects chosen for this paper were the works of Ričardas Gavelis and Milan Kundera. Due to the differences in the poetics of the works, it was chosen to analyze four works of each writer's large prose. In the case of Gavelis they are as follows: Vilnius Poker (Vilniaus pokeris, novel, 1989), Vilnius Jazz (Vilniaus džiazas, novel, 1993), The Last Generation of People on Earth (Paskutinioji Žemės žmonių karta, novel, 1995) and Six Ways of Suicide (Septyni savižudybės būdai, novel, 1999). From Kundera's works we picked out The Farewell Party (Valčík na rozloučenou, novel,1972), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Knihou smíchu a zapomnění, novel, 1978), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelnou lehkostí bytí, novel, 1984) a Immortality (Nesmrtelnost in french, 1990, in czech 1993). One of the main aims of this study is to introduce the Czech reader to Ričardas Gavelis: one of the most important and influential writers of Lithuanian literature of the late 20th century. The works of this writer are not yet properly evaluated even in his native...

The topic of this thesis is Georg Büchner's fragmentary drama Woyzeck. At the beginning, the work presents the playwright's biography set in the historical context and his work. It continues with the circumstances of Woyzeck's origin, the plot summary, description of the language of the play and problems with edition and decoding the manuscripts. The next part talks about the different concepts of Woyzeck in Czech theatres and what the reactions of the audience and the critics were. The work also briefly deals with Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, the libretto and the reaction of the Czech audience. The focus of this thesis are the translations into Czech, especially a detailed analysis and comparison of Rudolf Vápeník's and Ludvík Kundera's translations. The analysis is based on Katharina Reiß' translation analysis model. Only Kundera's translation was found to be a functional one, Vápeník's translation is - according to the author of the thesis - obsolete.

Tereza Jůzová's thesis Georg Trakl's Poetry in Czech Translations tries to discover which specific expression this Austrian poet takes in three Czech versions created by Bohuslav Reynek (1917, 1924), Ludvík Kundera (1965) and Radek Malý (2005) - three translators belonging to three different generations. The first chapter is devoted to Trakl and his work, ranked in the social and literary context. The second chapter presents the translators and their achievements, summarizes the period reception, and gives a brief overview of the poet's influence on original Czech literature. The focus of the thesis is the third chapter - translation analysis of six selected poems transposed to Czech. It is theoretically based on the translation shifts theory of Anton Popovič and on the method of translation analysis developed by Jiří Levý. It turns out that each of the original translators handled the original in their own way and accentuated different aspects of Trakl's work. Reynek colours the words by kind and gentle expression and his translation is the most peculiar. Kundera and Malý approached Trakl's plain style, Kundera, however, does not hesitate to underline some poetic passages. Malý intentionally reproduces the frequent ambiguity of the poet's formulations, which his predecessors insufficiently took...

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This thesis examines the treatment of the theme of suffering by three modern authors: Feodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, and Milan Kundera. The analysis proceeds through the identification and examination of three primary concepts which I will argue are at the heart of their work, and which provide the conceptual foundations for their depictions of suffering: the wretched, the absurd, and the banal. These concepts will be used as an avenue through which to explore and articulate their treatment of suffering. It will be argued further that the work of these three authors forms a conceptual series, in that each contributes in an important way to the evolution of a modern secular way of thinking about suffering by producing portraits of suffering informed by concepts appropriate to specific moments in the modern era. The sense of wretchedness which emerges from Dostoevsky’s work is inextricably linked with the late nineteenth-century crisis-of-faith. The concept of the absurd ties Camus to the early-twentieth-century existentialist tradition, while the sense of banality in Kundera’s novels locates him in an era which has witnessed both the horrors of World War Two and the decline in the humanist tradition. The factor that unites them and gives order to their differences, however, is a common concern with questions of meaning. The loss of meaning in the modern era, and in particular the loss of meaning in relation to suffering, is a thread which develops progressively throughout the series. It is, as will be argued at the outset, what binds these three disparate authors together and what gives their work and their treatment of suffering a particular modern character. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis is in three chapters. Chapter one is about Harold Bloom's theory of the Anxiety of Influence. Bloom's argument is that literary history is shaped by the anxiety of "strong" poets at their belatedness. I show that he depends upon a subjective interpretation of literary production in order to defend a rigidly traditional canon. / Chapter two deals with theories of intertextuality, principally those of Julia Kristeva and Michael Riffaterre. As alternatives to theories of influence, neither proves satisfactory. Both founder on the contradictory goal to explain all literature, at the expense of recognizing literary diversity. / Chapter three concerns literary variations. These are texts which are deliberately premised on pre-existing texts. I focus on three examples from this class of literary texts which is not satisfactorily dealt with by any of the theories I consider. I pursue a less wide-ranging approach in order to unearth important features of literary variations.