Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1993. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [281]-299).

This study addresses two works of fiction--Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies and J. M. Coetzee's Foe--and is separated into two chapters. The first chapter analyzes the indeterminate nature of postmodern space within the two novels as related to M. M. Bakhtin's idea of the chronotope found in his work The Dialogic Imagination. The second chapter addresses the self-reflexive creation of this postmodern space within each novel's hypodiegetic narratives and discussions of narrative creation within each respective diegetic narratives. In each novel, characters as authors create or discuss "inner" narratives that reflect upon the way chronotopes are created in fiction and reveal problematic aspects of those chronotopes. This narrative creation produces what I call a "postmodern creative chronotope" that self-reflexively embraces indeterminacy at the same time that it critiques the elements that produce this indefinite relationship between time and space, a strategy that is especially postmodern. I contextualize the discussion by introducing theories of postmodernism, specifically those of Jean-François Lyotard and Linda Hutcheon. Lyotard's claim that postmodernism resists totalizing structures and Hutcheon's contention that it engages in a simultaneous complicity and critique inform the relationships between time and space in both Beckett's and Coetzee's text. Additionally, theories of postmodern space contribute to the more specific discussion of the postmodern chronotopes in both novels. Spatial theorists like Edward Soja and Henri Lefebvre, among others, have attempted to reassert issues of space in what has been an ontological and epistemological framework that has prioritized time. Their reassertion of spatiality reconnects the two halves of the spatio-temporal framework of the chronotope in narrative. Beckett and Coetzee employ similar indeterminate and self-reflexive chronotopal strategies in their novels. Coetzee, however, inserts a number of global/political issues into his self-reflexive discussion of chronotopal creation and definition.

The doctoral thesis The World of Italian Comic-Realistic Poetry maps in a mostly chronological order the type of Italian poetry that is often referred to as 'giocosa' or 'comico- realistica' - in Czech translation, this best corresponds to 'poezie komicko-realistická'. The principal themes and individual topoi within the genre are analysed one by one, and examples are introduced to demonstrate the propositions related to the existence, characteristics and quality of the genre and the comic contained therein. The introduction is followed by an analysis of comic-realistic poetry of the first period which saw its heyday, namely, the first half of the 14th century, roughly comprising the years 1280- 1340. Following an analysis of sonnets by Rustico di Filippi, who is considered the emblematic founder of the genre in Italy, various topics are gradually analysed such as Bakhtinian reversal in values and seeming protest against the world, poverty and money, woman and anti-stilnovismo in sonnets of a great number of poets of the time, the most typical of them being Cecco Angiolieri. Topics with a more realistic background are also included, religious and political sonnets in particular. The issue of autobiography or pseudo- autobiography in comic-realistic texts is also covered in detail. Based on the...