In the first part of the text is a short overview of historical events and changes over the society inside of the normalization Czechoslovakia. It means especially establishing of the Charta 77 and VONS as the most important organizations in battle for human rights and freedom during this period. It was also described a psychology of communism whose consequences within national identity have been way too serious because they intervene in the present. Václav Havel was one of the main representatives of Czechoslovakian dissent and his plays were featuring the problem of human identity in this painful period. An objective of this work was to find a connection between problems of human identity loss inside the real normalization society and inside of Václav Havel's works. A considerable part of this text was dedicated to analysis of his special method of writing. His plays, essays and correspondence have been compared. The play Largo desolato (1984) was selected for a detailed interpretation and for the finally comparation with the texts of another Czech dissidents (Kantůrková, Kohout, Vaculík). Keywords dissent, drama, identity, communism, normalization

Student Number : 0420532W - MA research report - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / In this Theoretical Introduction the reasons for the choice of the historical fiction genre for the creative component of this Research Report will become clear in relation to other notable examples of the genre, indeed the academic essay will revolve around primary concerns with regard to the narrative of historical fiction and the debates around the representation that the work engages. In the postscript to the academic essay the possible destination for publication will be considered, as well as a summation of the writing and revision process, and a rumination of the projected readership or audience. As the creative component will be submitted in partial form, the postscript to the theoretical introduction will extrapolate the rest of the project, so as to provide some sense of the intended eventual work. Finally a special thanks to Ashleigh Harris, whose untiring help and encouragement is deeply appreciated; and to my husband, Norman, whose concern and enormous patience has sustained this endeavour.

La présente étude a pour but d’examiner l’amitié de Montaigne pour La Boétie dans la perspective de la lecture. Dans la première partie « Nous lecteurs de Montaigne », nous nous interrogerons sur la lecture et l’interprétation. À la suite d’A. Compagnon qui a étudié la question de lecture à travers les Essais de Montaigne, nous prendrons pour paradigme l’exégèse d’Augustin qui s’inspire des anciennes rhétorique et grammaire. Le rapport tel que l’évêque d’Hippone le conçoit entre l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament permettra de réfléchir davantage sur le point de vue « Montaigne et La Boétie ». Dans la deuxième partie « Montaigne éditeur de La Boétie », nous tenterons de rendre compte des publications en 1570 des œuvres de La Boétie par les soins de Montaigne. Comme elles suivent de près la traduction de la Théologie naturelle de Raymond Sebond et la retraite de l’éditeur, il conviendra de les situer d’abord dans le contexte biographique de Montaigne. Ensuite, nous essayerons de comprendre le principe éditorial de la Mesnagerie qui l’aurait conduit à publier les œuvres de l’ami, accompagnées des lettres-préfaces qu’il a jugé bon de placer en tête, avant de nous pencher sur les dernières paroles qu’il attribue à La Boétie. Dans la troisième et dernière partie « Montaigne lecteur de La Boétie », nous aborderons d’abord le problème du centre du Livre I des Essais, prétendument réservé au Discours de la servitude volontaire. Ensuite, nous envisagerons le rapport que Montaigne aurait voulu établir entre son propre ouvrage et le chef-d’œuvre de l’ami, avant d’examiner la présence de ce dernier dans les Essais à travers la comparaison de leurs ouvrages. / This study aims to examine Montaigne’s friendship with La Boétie from the perspective of readership. The first part, “We the readers of Montaigne”, reflects upon reading and interpretation. Following A. Compagnon’s studies on the question of reading in Montaigne’s Essays, we will adopt as paradigm Augustine’s exegesis which draws inspiration from ancient rhetoric and grammar. The relationship that the Bishop of Hippo observed between the Old and the New Testament will enable further reflection regarding « Montaigne and La Boétie ». The second part, “Montaigne editing La Boétie’s Editor”, attempts to survey La Boétie’s works published in 1570 by Montaigne. As these publications closely follow his translation of Raymond Sebond’s Natural Theology and the retirement of the editor, it is necessary to first situate them in context of Montaigne’s biography. We will proceed to consider the editorial principal of the Mesnagerie, which led Montaigne to publish his friend’s works, accompanied by the letter-prefaces which he saw fit to place at the beginning, before investigating the last words he attributed to La Boétie. The third and last part, “Montaigne reading La Boétie”, will first approach the problem of the center of Book I of the Essays, supposedly reserved to La Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. We will proceed to consider the relationship that Montaigne had wished to establish between his own work and his friend’s masterpiece, before examining this latter’s presence in the Essays by comparing their works.

The topic of this doctoral thesis is the nature essay: a literary form that became widely used in European literature around 1800 and continues to flourish in times of ecological crisis. Blending natural history discourse, essayistic thought patterns, personal anecdotes, and lyrical descriptions, nature essays are hybrid literary texts. Their authors have often been writers with a background in science. As interdis-cursive agents they move swiftly between different knowledge formations. This equips them with a unique potential in the context of ecology. Essayistic narrators can grasp the interdisciplinary character of environmental issues because they have the ability to combine different types of knowledge. They can be encyclopae¬dic fact mongers, metaphysical ramblers and ethical counsellors. More often than not they are all in one person. Where nature essays were taken into consideration so far they were mostly discussed together with other nature-oriented nonfiction forms under the label ‘nature writing’. This study proposes a different approach in that it insists that the nature essay has to be understood as a literary form in its own right. It explores canonical works of nature writing, such as Thoreau’s Walden, often for the first time as nature essays by discussing them alongside other typical examples of this genre tradition. In order to better understand the discursive impact of this form, I frame my discussion in the context of ecocritical theory. This means that I analyse my corpus of texts with regard to the ways in which writers depict the relationships between human and nonhuman spheres. Putting a particular focus on Germanic and An-glophone literature, the present thesis investigates central paradigms in the evolu-tion of nature essay writing. It covers a time period that stretches from its roots in late eighteenth-century natural history discourse to the present, identifying key epistemological, formal, and thematic patterns of this literary form the importance of which so far has been rather neglected by literary criticism.

This PhD by practice is an attempt to understand personal archives through filmmaking, and the kind of knowledge we can extract from them as well as how we can connect them to a wider social and political context. These questions are the core of my research and are explored in their different ways through both the film/practice and dissertation. I have chosen to make a film about my absent grandfather and his lost relationship with my mother during Fascist Portugal between the 1940s and the 1960s. Family archives have been largely used in films as a way of documenting realities, in the same way as any other public archival footage. In this instance, I tried to explore family and official archives acknowledging their contradictions and omissions with a view to finding a new “way of knowing” that is more closely connected to our emotions. I believe we all own a family archive regardless of its form. I named this archive “the subjective archive” and in it, I include physical archives such as paper documents, photographs and films, as well as a more intangible archive, which includes our memories, the stories we tell and listen to (oral history) and our dreams. The progression of the film is closely related to my journey as I become immersed in the story and learn things through many layers of archive documents. As a conclusion, I argue that these invisible elements of the subjective archive contain truth independent of their indexical nature, whereas physical documents can mislead us.

The audio visual essay, or ”film/video essay” as it might be better known, has in recent years started to enjoy a level of popularity previously unseen in its long and obscure history; encouraging a proper reexamination of the genre through the years, to see how it has developed and changed throughout its lifetime to finally arrive at where it is today. With a lineage stretching back across the centuries, through to the 16th -century writings of Michel de Montaigne, the essay format, either as it manifests in the traditions of literature or the audio visual mode, is a curious form of expression, preferring an indirect route towards knowledge, marked by quandary, reflection, the trying and retrying ideas in a process built around the act of searching. Because of its unusual and shifting nature, on both a formal and discursive level, coupled with a propensity for analysis and dialectical reasoning, it has been a staple of transgressive aesthetic practices, landing it with several of leading experimental filmmakers and movements of the pre- and postwar eras. Interestingly, however, in the new cultural landscape, shaped by the advent of the digital revolution, it has also been involved in a politically transgressive arena of democratized home productions, sparking discussion about the imperative conditions and potential future possibilities of media creation as a whole. To make sense of these historical proceedings, and the forces which impel them, a cohesive definition of the genre is in order, which can then be used as the basis of a functional historical model. As such, the following questions are prompted: What characteristics define the audio visual essay, in what ways has it manifested throughout its history and, by extension, how does one go about formulating a conception of its history? To accommodate these queries both an essayistic mode of analysis, concerning a work’s discursive and formalistic properties, and a chronological lineage of the audio visual essay, is proposed, and applied to different historical examples, to map out paths of development and progression as well as the genres response to the varying cultural, social, political and technological forces during its lifetime.

Zugl. leicht überarb. Fassung von: Göttingen, Univ., Diss., 2007

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In introduction of the work evolution of essay and its tendencies in Lithuania are reviewed. Flowering of the essay’s genre after recovery of Independence is accented. In the research part genre peculiarities of the collection of essays “Suplanuotos akimirkos” (“Planned moments”) written by famous Lithuanian essayist Giedra Radvilavičiūtė are discussed. The following three germ dominating in “Suplanuotos akimirkos” are distinguished: subjective, epic and publicistic. Subjective germ, which is close to lyric poetry, is created by dominating story in first person, impressionistic stylistics, manifold picture of orator and text written in the form of diary, letter. Existence of epic germ is proved by subjectiveness of “Suplanuotos akimirkos”, pictures of characters, clear link with the novel. Actual cultural, social and political themes, obvious reflections of feminism make essay of G.Radvilavičiūtė to be close to the publicistic germ. When discussing about these distinguished germ a lot of attention is paid to the expression of G.Radvilavičiūtė’s original style, autoirony is accented. In conclusions not only separation of subjective, epic and publicistic germ is accentuated, but also their tune.

Zugl.: Chemnitz, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2006