The aim of this essay is to examine Scottishness in the television series Outlander, to see if it has the potential to contribute with national identities, despite being a large-scale American production which tends to present stereotypical representations. The depiction is of the Scottish Highlands in the 18th century when the Highland culture was diminished. Using a semiotic approach, I analyse visual signs and find key elements which are used to represent the Highland culture. The series is based on a romantic plot and has stereotypical elements in representing Scotland and its culture. However, I argue that despite the stereotypical representations, the ethnic group in question still can gain national emotion from the depiction. This, because of Scotland’s already romanticized history and heritage culture today. The study comes to the conclusion that a popular media representation, like Outlander, can have an impact on a nation’s identity and even politics, by reconstructing historical legends in a modern world and bringing forth a sense of belonging-ness in excess of the stereotypes accompanied.

This essay is study of Aztec stone boxes from the pre-conquest Aztec empire. My study focuses on the interpretation of carvings on the surfaces, as well as the interiors and lids when applicable. The study includes not only traditionally functional boxes, but also altars (blocks or basins) and offering chambers, as comparative examples. The thesis focuses on three specific stone boxes located in museums in Mexico, Germany, and Great Britain: the Islas y Bustamante Box (Museo Nacional de Anthropologi­a, Mexico), the Hackmack Box (Museum fur Volkerkunde, Hamburg), and the Ahuitzotl Box (British Museum, London, and Museum fur Volkerkunde, Berlin). I am studying the iconographic programs, with a focus on themes of auto-sacrifice and creation, carved on the art objects themselves and their function as story-telling devices, with or without the contents that the box may have contained. In their forms, the objects themselves are metaphors for space, time, Aztec history, and Aztec creation myths. The Hackmack Box depicts the creation god, Quetzalcoatl (feathered serpent), and refers to the creation myth of mankind saved from the underworld and resurrected from the ashes of bones, using Quetzalcoatl's own blood. The box bears Montezuma's name glyph and is likely a tribute to his birth, his ascension and success as a ruler, and his piety. The Islas y Bustamante Box depicts the god of caves, Tepeyolotl, and refers to the myth that man ascended from caves, as all of life originated from the mouth of a cave that was also a natural spring. The box itself is a metaphor for this type of cave. The Ahuitzotl Box depicts the god of water Tlaloc, and refers to the myth of the tlaloques (helpers) discovery of "food-mountain", in other words, the discovery of maize that nourished the Aztec people. It has been linked to the dedication of the aqueduct built under the Aztec ruler Ahuitzotl, and serves as a tribute to this historical event. The cosmic arrangement of the motifs on these boxes reveal the object as a metaphor for space and time itself as they comply with the Aztec's earthly orientation of the heavens, the earth, an the underworld.

Implications surrounding body ownership prove to be an enduring struggle from their prevalence in ancient literary sources through more modern, contemporary works. I analyze the notions of body ownership and its lack thereof set forth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Homeric “Hymn to Demeter” regarding the myth of Persephone. Then, I consider larger meanings through analysis of the following contemporary works, approached in terms of the narrators: Rita Dove’s Mother Love, Louise Glück’s Averno, A.E. Stallings’s “Hades Welcomes His Bride” and “Persephone Writes a Letter to Her Mother,” and D.M. Thomas’s “Pomegranate.” The complexities within the myth itself amplify the complications in the contemporary interpretations of the myth. There is a range of differing levels of accepting sentiments in the contemporary works about the idea that no one ever has complete ownership or control over his own body. Comparing the different lenses through with the contemporary authors (and ancient authors!) chose to incorporate the myth of Persephone into their works reveals overarching themes, enlightening the reader about the nuances of the arguably most famous abduction in history.

I have created art that has evolved from my own personal experiences. Life is capricious, and with the changes wrought by age, joy, and grief, I have found this self-referential work inevitable. Here, I have documented the journey that has brought me through personal wars, battles, and truces. I have come to believe that although my individual experiences may be unique, my responses to them are not. Loss and victory are universal.

Writing these poems over the last several years has been both challenge and solace. Many of them have been written under great constraints of time and energy, in flashes of insight (sometimes even at stop lights), and later revised. Taken together, they reflect preoccupation with the weight and heft of a thinking life in many different manifestations: internal, domestic, aesthetic, political. The writing of them has created for me quiet places for both close looking and expansive thinking, and into these places I hope my readers can walk, through the poems themselves.

In literary discourse from the Genesis creation myth through John Milton's Paradise Lost and beyond, Eve has been patriarchally considered to be the bringer of Sin and Death into the world. In Paradise Lost Eve is depicted as deceiving Adam into the Fall by way of the Serpent. Paradise Lost creates a Miltonic command that helps to further blame Woman for Sin and Death. Milton's poem is based on the Genesis creation myth written by Canaanite authors. In this myth the Canaanite authors wished to rid the world of Goddess worship and, by humanizing Eve, they successfully obliterate that form of worship. As a result of this obliteration of the Goddess, Eve, as a humanized form of the ancient Goddess Asherah, remains unredeemed for her sin and forever held to blame. Throughout what Michel Foucault calls the archive, or discourse in which power resides, Eve/Woman continues to be seen by patriarchal discourse as to blame for the Fall. There has never been a successful redemption for Eve in the archive. Although Samuel Richardson's Clarissa has been suggested as a successful redeemer of Eve, Clarissa's blatant will to death and, therefore, will to power precludes a successful redemption of Eve. The successful Redemption of Eve comes in Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles. By way of Tess's Goddess stature and her self-sacrifice at the end of the novel she successfully effects a redemption of Eve/Woman. As Goddess, Tess enters a state of otherwise than being in the intertext and becomes the Supernatural narrator who narrates both her own story and the unsaid story of the Goddess in the mythic narrative. By way of this otherwise than being as the Supernatural narrator, Tess takes on Eve's blame and intertextually subverts the Miltonic command by narrating the Goddess's prehistorical purity. As a result, then, Eve is redeemed and the Goddess's unsaid story is reinstated in the mythic narrative.

Entre 1815 et 1848, la figure napoléonienne s’impose comme l’une des sources d’inspiration majeures de la poésie française : les plus grands auteurs mais aussi les chansonniers populaires et les poètes d’occasion se confrontent à l’évocation de celui qui apparaît alors comme l’archétype du héros. Ce travail se propose d’explorer le corpus de la poésie napoléonienne en prenant pour guide la notion de mythe littéraire : de quelles façons, sous quelles formes et avec quels enjeux le mythe littéraire de Napoléon émerge-t-il de cette poésie ?On se propose ici trois objectifs : rendre compte de la naissance d’un mythe littéraire dans l’histoire ; aller au-delà d’une étude parcellaire pour exposer sa structure d’ensemble ; étudier les sens que prend le mythe littéraire en les comprenant dans le contexte plus large du Romantisme. Un travail de dénombrement de la poésie napoléonienne sert de point de départ à une analyse qui tente de marier les approches chronologique, thématique et esthétique du mythe. Quatre parties illustrent chacune un segment chronologique du corpus, alternant entre présentations d’ensemble et développements consacrés à des œuvres précises : passage de la représentation d’un héros épique à celle d’un héros mythique (1815-1821), premier essor du mythe sous la forme d’une aurore libérale (1821-1830), apothéose du mythe (1830-1840), reflux et in fine changement de statut de ce mythe (1840-1848). La cinquième partie propose une étude en synchronie qui synthétise les matériaux précédemment rassemblés : on y explore les thèmes constitutifs et les structures du mythe ainsi que ses liens avec le Romantisme. / Between 1815 and 1848, Napoleon became established as one of the major sources of inspiration in French poetry. Writers of all kinds – from the greatest poets of the age to lyricists of popular songs and part-time versifiers – took on the challenge of evoking a figure that came to be presented as the archetypal hero. This study aims to explore the corpus of Napoleonic poetry within the framework of the notion of literary myth : how, in what forms and with what consequences did the literary myth of Napoleon emerge in this poetry ?The following three objectives are thus proposed: to account for the historical birth of a literary myth ; to go beyond a fragmented analysis in order to identify an overarching structure ; to identify and situate the meanings of the literary myth in the broader context of Romanticism.A cataloguing of Napoleonic poetry serves as a starting point for an analysis that aims to marry chronological, thematic and aesthetic approaches to the myth. Each of the first four parts examines a chronological segment of the corpus, alternating between general presentations and more specific studies focusing on particular works : the transition from the representation of an epic hero to the representation of a mythical hero (1815-1821), the first blossoming of the myth, occurring together with a liberal rereading of Napoleon’s actions (1821-1830), the apogee of the myth (1830-1848), the decline and eventual redefining of the myth (1840-1848). The fifth part proposes a synthesis of the material that has been thus far assembled in order to explore the constitutive themes and the structures of the myth as well as its links to Romanticism.

The thesis aims to explore the relationship between national identity and the myth. Key to the analysis are the questions of the manner in which a collective identity becomes dependant on literary narrations as well as the particular motives that constitute these narrations. The analysis of the relationship is carried out in reference to particular literary texts. The discussion is based on the critical approach of literary theory and the analyses of relevant socio-political aspects. The discussion is based on a comparative approach to the chosen literary texts. The comparative method focuses on the socio-political and historical contexts of the literary works, as well as on the different concepts of communal identity portrayed. Key texts to the debate are the collection of poems of James Macpherson, Poems of Ossian, Sir Walter Scott's historical novel, Waverley, and the Czech Manuscripts of Dvůr Králové and Zelená Hora. This thesis commences the discussion with a theoretical approach to the relationship between myth and history. The discussion aims at the manner in which both the mentioned elements constitute collective identity. The thesis emphasises those aspects which give rose to manipulative statements and conceptions that shape the discourse. To the fore thus comes the question of...

The thesis presents the mythological studies of the German Romantics. The research focuses on the four important mythologists - Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Creuzer, Karl Otfried Müller and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. The analysis of their work leads to their specific concept of the myth. The early enlightenment tendencies, which rejected the myths as stories about gods of the undeveloped men were replaced with the conception of the romantics. They disclosed the symbolic character of the myths and explained the origin and nationalization of the myth on the basis of the symbol theory. At the same time they award truth to the mythological process which the man necessarily goes through. The creation of God in the mind of man is clarified with the philosophy of mythology. This way the romantics contribute to the development of the mythology towards a critical historical science.

The diploma thesis on the topic of "Myths about Domestic Violence in Comparison with Reality" deals with incorrect and false notions which are connected with the given phenomenon. In the first part fundamental concepts, definitions, signs, types and forms are explained. The following part considers particular groups of myths about domestic violence. The first group focuses on myths denying the existence of the problem itself, where a myth about domestic violence as a private issue and a myth classifying domestic violence as a common struggle between partners are discussed. The second group deals with myths connected with the socioeconomic status of a family in which domestic violence takes place. The third group focuses on women and myths that it is women who are the causes of violence that their partners commit on them. It also deals with the effects which violence leaves on women. The last group of myths concentrates on men as batterers in domestic violence and perception of risk factors which can lead to their violent behaviour. The thesis relates to already existing publications, statistics and researches, in Czech as well as foreign literature.