This dissertation examines the writings of three seminal twentieth century thinkers, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Jacques Derrida, through the lens of their encounter with the post-Shoah poetry of Paul Celan. These thinkers are associated with influential, competing movements in twentieth century literary theory: philosophical hermeneutics, critical theory, and deconstruction. The three philosophers have disparate biographies and political orientations, yet each championed the ambiguity of literary language as a bulwark against the problematic, even violent, certainties of quotidian language. Additionally, each of them regarded Celan as an exemplar of a salutary literary ambivalence. This project clarifies how the critics’ approaches to literature, honed through consideration of a survivor-poet, represent an attempt to come to terms with the catastrophic violence of the Holocaust. While perceptive in their readings of Celan’s poetry, each sought to secure trans-historical insights into the nature of human language, a task that risks effacing the ‘real’ historical and experiential specificity of Celan’s writing. Celan readings are thus a case study for understanding philosophical contemporaries’ treatment of literary texts and their relationship to contemporaneous history. By looking at these varied theorists in tandem and by showing how Celan’s poetry both informs and resists their ideas, this dissertation cultivates a method of reading that is adaptable and not beholden to one tradition. Treating what the thinkers neglect, new readings emerge that explore Celan’s allusions to the Hebrew Bible, Jewish ritual, and antisemitism. Celan’s poetry animates multiple, conflicting interpretive traditions, yet questions, in its testimonial character, the adequacy of a theoretical approach to literature.

The subject of this thesis (Images of femininity and masculinity in Ještěd novels by Karolína Světlá) is a gender analysis of selected prose of Karolína Světlá, focused specifically on the works such as Vesnický román, Kříž u potoka, Frantina, Kantůrčice and Nemodlenec. The theoretical part presents basic principles, approaches and methods of the feminist literary theory including concepts focused on analyses of power and domination out of which I mostly use the work by Pierre Bourdieu. The theoretical part also contains positioning the writer's work within the literary-historical context and introducing source texts. The core of the thesis is a gender analysis based on my interpretation of texts and the method of resistant reading that concentrates on specific gender aspects in the entire series of works - the subject of my interest is creating masculinity and femininity (including gender attributes and roles or myths and archetypes), narration of the story from a gender perspective, forms of motherhood and fatherhood, topics of power, violence and sexuality. Attention is also paid to the motives of a victim or romantic love. Not only was this part greatly inspired by the work of foreign authors (Bourdieu, Beauvoir, Pratt), but also by many Czech studies and books applying approaches of the...

This essay applies a critical lens to Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf. The aim of this essay is to investigate if and how Mrs. Dalloway can be utilized for students to practice critical consciousness in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. In Mrs. Dalloway, Woolf criticizes her own contemporary society by deliberately writing about the obnoxious social class system in London during the inter-war period. This deliberate social critique is analyzed by both looking into the author’s background and the historical time period the novel was written. The Marxist literary critic, Terry Eagleton argues that in order to fully understand literature, you must compare both the author and the author’s contemporary society to the novel itself. By analyzing these aspects, it is possible to understand any piece of literature from any given historical time period. Moreover, this essay desires to ascertain if canonical literature is relevant when teaching students about social class and inclusiveness. Furthermore, this essay argues that having a Marxist perspective can help students become critically conscious of both their environment and society. Also, it examines if the combination of Marxist theory together with critical pedagogy can create an educational situation that is equally fair for all students, regarding their socioeconomic status. The results of this essay concluded that applying either Marxist theory or critical literacy pedagogy to literature, could make students become more critically conscious about their environment, which could help to replicate the teaching philosophies of critical pedagogy by Paulo Freire.

This diploma thesis examines Sally Rooney's novels Conversations with Friends and Normal People from the viewpoint of Marxist literary criticism. Based on the author's own claim to incorporate "a Marxist framework" into her writing as a way of describing the surrounding world, the thesis, there- fore, aims to explore the aforementioned novels with regard to Marx's theory. The first part focuses on the theoretical background and principal thoughts of Marxism and Marxist literary criticism. Next, there is outlined the conception of social classes in Ireland and a brief introduction of Sally Rooney's views in order to provide context to the novels. The second part of the thesis then applies the theoret- ical background to an analysis of the novels themselves. This includes their stories, settings, charac- ters and conveyed ideas in relation to the issues of base and superstructure, power dynamics, class identity, social status and influences of economic as well as cultural and educational hegemony.

[pt] Esta pesquisa quer rever e tratar do ponto de vista teórico-crítico os critérios usados na experiência pessoal e empírica de curadoria da exposição Poesia Agora, a fim de ampliar o estudo do contexto da poesia nacional pós-2000. É também a oportunidade de avaliação acadêmica das surpresas e questões levantadas ao longo do processo de trabalho e de verificação de quais indícios estas podem nos fornecer. Assim, será buscada a própria força pensante que a poesia atual pode produzir sobre si mesma. O objetivo é empreender uma investigação crítica, uma reavaliação estética e política sobre a poesia contemporânea, entendendo-a para além do âmbito meramente textual, mas dentro de um sistema de práticas sociais. / [en] This research aims to review and approach from the theoretical-critical point of view the criteria used in the personal and empirical experience of curatorship of the Poesia Agora (Poetry Now) exhibition, in order to broaden the study of the context of national post-2000 poetry. Additionally, it is an opportunity to evaluate academically the surprises and unpredictable issues raised throughout the work process and checking what evidence they can provide us. Thus, the very thought power that contemporary poetry can trigger on itself will be sought. The goal is to undertake a critical investigation, an aesthetic and political reappraisal of contemporary poetry, understanding it beyond the merely textual scope, but within a system of social practices.

<p>  </p> <p>While the medieval lexicon did not include a comprehensive term for disability as we understand it today, images of impaired and disabled bodies proliferate in Middle English texts. This dissertation investigates textual representations of the material body across some of the most popular genres of the later Middle Ages (religious exempla, confessional literature, and hagiography) to demonstrate how medieval authors implement impaired bodies in service of spiritual exploration. I show how impaired medieval bodies that are often excluded from discussions of disability—for instance, personified sins, aging bodies, and martyrs’ bodies—are represented in distinctly material terms, drawing attention to medieval authors’ complex and nuanced explorations of bodily difference. Through sustained close readings and attention to medieval authors’ engagement with their source texts, I find that the impaired body operates as a generative site for engagement with significant ontological questions of the period —and that these textual depictions ultimately reveal the body’s resistance to easy or straightforward categorization. Moreover, my research demonstrates the utility of a more nuanced disability studies approach to medieval literature, intervening in current discussions about the ethics of applying the lens of disability to historical texts.</p>

Literary theory widely attests to the powerful role of characters as vehicles in producing meaning. Yet current narrative models focus almost exclusively on primary characters, neglecting supporting characters, who are capable of reshaping narrative emphases or revealing layers of story within the story. This project demonstrates the significance of supporting characters in biblical narratives by applying a narrative methodology drawn from cognitive narratology to the Jephthah story (Judg 10:6 12:7) in order to illuminate the distinct perspectives of each secondary character within its storyworld. The first chapter outlines a cognitive narrative methodology, which asserts that the purpose of narrative is not merely to convey a meaning, but for readers to experience and engage the story. Therefore, it focuses not on determining the meaning of the text, but embracing the power of stories to become transformative and meaningful experiences for the reader with multiple points of engagement (characters). Chapter two introduces the timecourse (causally related sequence of events) of the Jephthah cycle and then analyzes the initiating event perspective. This chapter establishes the situations and expectations between Yhwh and his people that echo in unique ways into the scenes that follow. Each chapter that follows re-reads the story of Jephthah (Judg 10:17 12:7) through the lens of a supporting character king, the daughter of Jephthah, and the Ephraimites person and perspective through their social role (social and historical expectations built into social models), mode of conduct (character assessment based on biblical and social norms), and disposition (the personality of that character determined through speech, action, or direct narration). Each chapter also assesses the tellability of the story (establishing their viable perspective within the text) and concludes by summarizing the perspective and engaging with it from my own subjective awareness. Using the Jephthah account, I demonstrate the complexity and depth of the many unnamed characters who engage with this morally ambiguous judge, suggesting that they are part of a pattern of outside, or other, voices in biblical narrative that have the power to transform readers.

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