Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-43).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-43). Also available in print.

The PhD thesis The Reception of Milan Kundera in Czech and French Cultural Worlds aims to describe the main tendences and changes in the evolution regarding the reception of Milan Kundera and his work in both of the countries concerned, from its beginning to the year 2015 and their consecutive comparison. The analysis of the perception of the writer's work is based especially on articles from the press and the monographies about the author's work published until now in both of the cultural worlds. An essential part of our work has also become the chapter dealing with the author's occasional texts and translations published in various periodical or in the form of prefaces or postfaces to other monographies.

Diploma thesis Czech literary dreams deals with interpretation of three novels by Milan Kundera (The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laugter and Forgetting). The core of the interpretations lies with the dreamy parts of the novel. The meaning of the text was sought within relations of more and less noticeable subjects and intertextual references. The interpretations of chosen Kundera's novels are partially observed through the context of works of Ludvík Vaculík, in particular by the context of The Czech Dreambook.

The diploma thesis deals with musical inspiration on the base of the analysis of the composition and motives in Kundera's novels. Basic source of the analysis is Kundera's own reflection of modern music, its principles and functions in author's essays. The aim of the thesis is to chart sources of inspiration which mirror in Kundera's prose and other texts. We proceed from the concrete to the abstract, from analysis of motives and composition of each book, to the intellectual level which is perceptible mainly in author's essays and essaistic passages in some novels. Author's texts are dealt with chronologically. As the level of motives and themes are concerned, the musical inspiration is treated via themes, such as Beethoven and his art of variations, noisy contemporary music and the end of music in the work of Schoenberg. On the level of composition, the author writes novels using schemes of musical forms, such as theme with variations, rondo, sonata form or fugue. In his essays, he mainly examines works of composers Beethoven, Janacek, Stravinskij and Schoenberg. All three levels are connected and they influence each other. The last chapter is oriented didacticly and an option is offered how to use this topic at school. It is important to considerate cross-curricular links between literature and music.

This diploma thesis deals with the work of Michal Viewegh from the point of view of functional and value division of literary production. It tries to prove that bipolar model, established in Czech environment, in his case does not work, since it cannot be assigned not only to highbrow literature, nor to popular literature, because the work of Viewegh is in comparison with them too sophisticated. Therefore the author proposes to revive forgotten trichotomic model of literary classification and use it for situation Viewegh's work. The author, contrary to literary criticism, is of the opinion that every single Viewegh's novel does not substantially differentiate from each other. The author supports this argument using comparative analysis of positively and negatively evaluated novels, resulting into finding that both groups despite of differences in critical assessment contain the same constitutive characteristics that are typical for midcult. This conclusion is further investigated by comparison of selected Viewegh's works with prose works of typical writers, typically low (Lanczová) and high (Kundera) literary level, through their work with love theme. Result confirms the rightness of situation of Viewegh's literary prose into the midcult: Viewegh handles love's theme in a more sophisticated and...

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...

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This thesis discusses topic related to return to native land in three contemporary Francophonic novels. The study is founded on the paradigm described in Homer's Odyssey: mythological return of Odysseus to Ithaca is used as a base for analysis of a chosen piece of work which is Kundera's L'Ignorance, a novel of Malagasy writer Michèle Rakotoson Juillet au pays and L'Énigme du retour of Haitian novelist Dany Laferrière. The main aim of this thesis is to find out how the tradition of Homer's myth is reflected in mentioned stories of odyssey. Key words Francophone literatures, Milan Kundera, Dany Laferrière, Michèle Rakotoson, exile, identity