Diploma Thesis Abstract: Contemporary Czech Poetry and its Perceiver Charles University in Prague Faculty of Education Czech Language and Litterature Department Vendula Hoření The introduced diploma thesis deals with the topic of contemporary Czech poetry. Its typical form and content are desired to be found. By "contemporary" is meant the period in which the materials for its realisation were collected, i.e. between spring 2010 and spring of the 2011th. Emphasis is placed on the perceiver and the way in which he can meet with poetry today. The hypothesis that the result of research will be revelation that certain contents and forms are timeless, but others only current, was confirmed. As a new content were found topics as responses to the actual phenomenas of virtuality, ecology and consumer society. Among the new forms of contemporary Czech poetry were classified: the project Poems on the Underground, anthology The Best Czech Poetry, competition in author recitation Poetry Slam and singer-songwriter meeting Open mic as taken from foreign models and Physical poetry of Petr Váša and in a certain sense also poetic improvisation of Jakub Foll as original contemporary Czech poetry.

The diploma thesis analyzes the literary characters of Communist protagonists in the novels and short stories published in Czech literature of the last fifteen years. We assume that the time distance dynamically changes the concepts of the representations of the Communist protagonists. The aim of this work is not only to define the stereotypical traits that are associated with the figure of the Communists, but it also attempts to identify the practices of the lifting up of such protagonists from the traditional semiotic connotations. The thesis analyzes the characters of the Communists from the point of the thematic units, as they seem to be the most common semantic units for standard readers.

The thesis deals with the author's personality and the novels of Miloš Urban. The aim was to map their existing reception, especially with regard to the development and reflection of author's style and appearance of the narrator. With respect that this is the current author and his work is not yet reflected in a separate monographic material consisted the thesis primarily of review works, both published in the literature review journals and those published by the daily press. Work focused on confrontation the perspective of the reviewers and my own critical reading of the author's novels.

Né à Castello près de Florence, Mario Luzi est consideré aujourd’hui comme une des voix plus nobles de la poésie en Europe. Le corpus des textes choisis pour l’étude est constitué par l’édition suivante: Mario Luzi, L’opera poetica, a cura di S. Verdino, Milano, Mondadori, «I Meridiani», 1998. Le volume, établi par l’auteur même, est divisé chronologiquement en trois parties: Il giusto della vita, Nell’opera del mondo et Frasi nella luce nascente. À partir de cette organisation textuelle, notre projet de recherche analyse l’œuvre poétique de Luzi, de son premier recueil La Barca (1935), qui marque sa saison hermétique, jusqu’à Viaggio terrestre e celeste di Simone Martini (1994), qui représente sa pleine maturité artistique. Les nombreuses occurrences des lexèmes «vita» et «filo» dès les premiers recueils confirment que le thème de la vie est le fil principal de l’œuvre poétique luzienne, mais autour de ce fil Luzi tisse d’autres fils poétiques : le sourire, la lumière, le voyage (comme métaphore de la vie). La tendance critique dominante préfère étudier un recueil en particulier, ou s’arrête tout au plus à l’analyse d’un ensemble homogène de recueils. Au contraire nous estimons que la lecture transversale et l’exploration intertextuelle de l’ensemble de l’œuvre poétique luzienne permettent de jeter un nouvel éclairage sur le processus de composition et en même temps de tracer des pistes herméneutiques originales. À travers sa poésie Luzi traque les raisons dernières de l’existence, les transformations perpétuelles du réel et les contradictions qui hantent l’homme moderne, remettant sans cesse en question les certitudes pour tenter d’atteindre à une vérité plus profonde. / Born in Castello, near Florence, Mario Luzi is today regarded as one of the highest poetical voice in Europe. The corpus of texts adopted to studying is Mario Luzi, The poetical works, edited by Stefano Verdino, Milano, Mondadori, «I Meridiani», 1998, which is divided into three chronological parts: Il giusto della vita, Nell’opera del mondo and Frasi nella luce nascente. From this textual organization, approved by the author, our project of research analyses Mario Luzi’s poetical works from his first book of verse, La barca (1935), which marks his hermetic season to Viaggio terrestre e celeste di Simone Martini (1994), which represents his full artistic maturity. The high frequency of words «vita» and «filo» in his first books of verse reveals that the theme of life is the principal thread of Luzi’s poetical works, but he interweaves metaphorically others poetic threads such as the thread of smile, the thread of light and the thread of voyage (as metaphor of life). Generally critics examine only one book of verse or no more of a homogeneous collection of poems. On the contrary, we think that a transversal reading and an intertextual exploration of the whole Luzi’poetical works give a new point of view on his artistic process of composition and at the same time they show original interpretations. By his poetry Mario Luzi pursues the ultimate aims of existence, the continuous transformations of reality, the modern human contradictions, and comes certitudes into question to achieve a more deep truth.

There has been a considerable amount of research done on questions of authorship over the past century or so, and the interest in the subject is still going strong today. This essay takes as its point of departure two seminal poststructuralist essays on authorship—Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author,” and Michel Foucault’s “What is an Author?”—as these texts have had a significant impact on the discourse. It examines how scholars like Seán Burke and Jane Gallop have explained this anti-authorial tendency and extended the connection between authors and death, and how their findings relate to a performative conception of authorship. The study will take as its central critical approach the study of authorship as cultural performance as formulated by Ingo Berensmeyer, Gert Buelens, and Marysa Demoor, and Sonja Longolius. It will utilize this approach to analyze four contemporary American novels—James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (2003), Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium (2006), Ron Currie Jr.’s Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles (2013), and J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst’s S. (2013)—and the different ways in which these novels problematize notions of authorial self-invention. The focus of the analysis will be on the author-reader relationship, moments of recognition, and developments in writing technology. These issues have been selected for their connection to current conceptions of the creation of author personae, which can in turn be viewed as reflecting performance as it takes place in daily life and therefore give indications as to the cultural climate in which the novels were produced. Ultimately, the aim is to have illustrated how these novels present the reader with textually traced author personae that are highly aware of their own performances. In addition, it is suggested that authors are dependent on their readers to recognize these personae for them to become felicitously legitimized.

My work concerns the divergent narratives created by fusing varied, often conflicting, textures, colors and fabrics, into a tenuous order. I intend for these otherwise clashing materials to create drama that is simultaneously enthusiastic, epic and ambiguous. While this media's formal properties re an important component of my work, the material's cultural and art-historical associations are also are critical ingredient. In this thesis, I will explore the use of the varied collage material, hierarchical compositions and contemporary influence of 19th Century Romantic themes as they relate to forming a variety of distinctly contemporary narratives in my compositions. I will investigate how my artistic point-of-view is informed by art-history, irony and the work of contemporary painters. Finally, I will discuss how my work engages a contemporary version of the Sublime.

This thesis is a description and critical analysis of the processes, concepts and imagery of my artwork. I am interested in creating visual narratives, often figurative, in the form of sculpture, collage, and installation. In my work I attempt to call attention to the human condition, specifically addressing sexuality, mortality, psychological issues and power struggles. I incorporate both cultural and personal references and use traditional and non traditional materials and processes that are intended to conceptually inform the viewer further. My intention is to create distinct embodiments that provoke contemplative emotion and in which the object and the aesthetic experience allow us to consider and reconsider who we are and how we progress as a culture.

The work that I have produced during my graduate studies at the University of New Orleans addresses the impact that humans have on the environment in our contemporary world. A primary focus, but not exclusive, includes industrial materials or objects, their overwhelming presence that informs the juxtaposition of economic progress, and the reality of environmental disruption. Humor and metaphor are central themes of my work and reference my personal observations and experiences of living in the midst of these environments. Sources from Contemporary underground art have been filtered through my exposure to studio practice and art history, mainly the autonomous processes of Surrealism, resulting in a variety of influences that inform my work. I present imaginary images of architectural, biological, and mechanical transformations with the hopes of nudging the viewers' expectations and to create a better understanding of my opinion pertaining to the world and reality we all live in.

The conceptual foundation for my work lies in the idea of "interaction." I work towards exposing this idea in its more basic and routine form, as well as the broad scope of it. Ranging beyond the common associations made with human to human interaction, my work enters a number of realms including environmental, architectural, and intra-personal interactions, working amongst the subtleties of each. I seek to create an image of relate-able experience, thus I feel the medium of photography is necessitated, as it is rooted in the idea of documentary and realism, in effect, cataloguing images of or influenced by the outside world.

This creative thesis of poems explores the relationship between traveling literally and traveling metaphorically as the speaker grapples with the reality of her mother's Alzheimer's disease. In the process, she uncovers her own potentialities and limitations.