Zugl.: Jena, Univ., Diss., 2006

The thesis deals with recent Czech translations of children's poetry in English and their addressees. In the first part, we describe the terminological issues related to the terms dětská literatura and dětská poezie (and their English equivalents), focus on the specific features of children's poetry and the process of translating children's literature, and finally outline the history of children's poetry in the Czech lands, the United Kingdom and the USA. In the second part, we compare target texts with their source texts in terms of content (proper nouns, puns etc.) and form (rhythm, rhyme etc.), thereby showing the strategies the translators used. Finally, we also comment on the issues pertaining to the publishing of children's literature and describe the origination of the Czech translation of Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic. Keywords: children's literature, children's poetry, translation, translation analysis, Shel Silverstein, Robert Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Milne, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Norman Lindsay

This dissertation examines the nature of epiphanic discourse in three of Robert Browning's religious poems, namely, 'Christmas- Eve', 'Easter-bay' and 'La Saisiaz'. Chapter 1 investigates epiphany from religious, historical and theoretical perspectives, followed by a discussion of Browning's developing Christian beliefs. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the epiphanic moment in the companion poems, 'Christmas- Eve' and 'Easter-Day'. Chapter 4 explores how the double epiphany initiated from Browning's personal experience recounted in 'La Saisiaz', finds its resolution in 'The Two Poets of Croisic'. Browning's 'good minute' or 'infinite moment' originates in Romanticism and reverberates into the twentieth century mainly in the writing of James Joyce, who first used the word 'epiphany' in its literary sense. Because Browning's faith allowed continual interrogation of Christian doctrine, his experience and reading of epiphanic moments avoid any attempt at closure. Thus they offer the reader both a human image for recognition and a coded legend for individual interpretation / M.A. (English Studies) / M.A. (English)

Many Nineteenth century writers experienced the withdrawal of God discussed by Miller in The Disappearance of God. Robert Browning and Charles Dickens present two examples of "Fra Lippo Lippi" and Great Expectations model effective alternatives to accepting God's absence. Conversely "Andrea del Sarto" accepts the void the other two heroes shun.

Representations of the Gypsies and their lifestyle were widespread in British culture in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This thesis analyzes the varying literary and artistic responses to the Gypsy figure in the period circa 1780-1870. Addressing not only well-known works by William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, John Clare, Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold and George Eliot, but also lesser-known or neglected works by Gilbert White, Hannah More, George Crabbe and Samuel Rogers, unpublished archival material from Princess Victoria's journals, and a range of articles from the periodical press, this thesis examines how the figure of the Gypsy was used to explore differing conceptions of the landscape, identity and freedom, as well as the authoritative discourses of law, religion and science. The influence of William Cowper's Gypsy episode in Book One of The Task is shown to be profound, and its effect on ensuing literary representations of the Gypsy is an example of my interpretation of Wim Willem's term ‘paper Gypsies': the idea that literary Gypsies are often textual (re)constructions of other writers' work, creating a shared literary, cultural and artistic heritage. A focus on the picturesque and the Gypsies' role within that genre is a strong theme throughout this thesis. The ambiguity of picturesque Gypsy representations challenges the authority of the leisured viewer, provoking complex responses that either seek to contain the Gypsy's disruptive potential or demonstrate the figure's refusal to be controlled. An examination of texts alongside contemporary paintings and sketches of Gypsies by Princess Victoria, George Morland, Thomas Gainsborough, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable and John Everett Millais, elucidates the significance of the Gypsies as ambiguous ciphers in both literature and art.

This dissertation examines the nature of epiphanic discourse in three of Robert Browning's religious poems, namely, 'Christmas- Eve', 'Easter-bay' and 'La Saisiaz'. Chapter 1 investigates epiphany from religious, historical and theoretical perspectives, followed by a discussion of Browning's developing Christian beliefs. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the epiphanic moment in the companion poems, 'Christmas- Eve' and 'Easter-Day'. Chapter 4 explores how the double epiphany initiated from Browning's personal experience recounted in 'La Saisiaz', finds its resolution in 'The Two Poets of Croisic'. Browning's 'good minute' or 'infinite moment' originates in Romanticism and reverberates into the twentieth century mainly in the writing of James Joyce, who first used the word 'epiphany' in its literary sense. Because Browning's faith allowed continual interrogation of Christian doctrine, his experience and reading of epiphanic moments avoid any attempt at closure. Thus they offer the reader both a human image for recognition and a coded legend for individual interpretation / M.A. (English Studies) / M.A. (English)