During the normalization period, the topic of countryside life in literature started to reappear. Many prosaic works depicted character's departure from the city to the countryside and his/her beginning of their new life in unknown surroundings. This thesis focuses on such works of art, published between the 1970s and 1980s. It compares four officially published examples of countryside novels containing any mark of escapism (in novels written by Jan Otčenášek, Bohumil Říha, Jiří Medek, Jan Kostrhun) with examples of prose published in samizdat or exile (Mojmír Klánský, Milan Kundera). Through intertextual as well as thematic and compositional analysis, the thesis investigates common features contained in this "escapist" literature. The analysis is inspired by the poetics of space and by the concept of the countryside as an idyllic space.

Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Gao Xingjian is well known especially as an author of drama and novels Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible. This thesis examines his early novellas and short stories that were created at the end of the 70s and in the 80s. An analysis of meaning contruction is focused primarily on motifs and narrative techniques. It explores the process of his literary creation in context of official ideological requirements on literature as well as in context of literature genres known as "scar literature", "literature of reflection" and "root seeking" literature. This thesis shows how Gao Xingjian is trying to create a unique and individual worldview of his characters.

My thesis aims to present the Czech translation of excerpts from two novels by Srđan Valjarević, a contemporary Serbian author, and their translatological analysis. The first translational part deals with Valjarević's debut novel Leaf on a Breadcrust (1990, List nakorici hleba), the second introduces his latest work to date, Lake Como (2007, Komo). Valjarević's fiction has not been presented yet to the Czech audience by means of translation. The core of my thesis lies in two chapters: the first one is devoted to the author's biography and a comprehensive summary of his published work; the second one contains translations and commentaries of the selected excerpts.

M.A. (African Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This research aims to investigate the development of the Sepedi detective story, and to classify existing works into appropriate sub-genres. The study will use the methods of comparison, grouping, description and interpretation. The growth and development of the Sepedi detective story from 1951 to 1998 is discussed and the influence of Ramaila’s short stories from the collection Molomatsebe (1951) on other Sepedi detective stories shown. Various problems are examined, including (a) the scarcity of Sepedi detective stories as compared to the number of stories in European languages, and (b) the classification principles suitable for determining the different sub-genres. The study uses a narratological approach, which examines texts focusing on three levels, namely content, structure (plot) and style. This study pays particular attention to the first two levels, though the last level, style, is discussed briefly in the closing chapter. In the investigation the definitions of a detective story formulated by various literary theorists are discussed, and the challenge of classifying detective stories into sub-genres examined. The most important classification systems found in the literature are those formulated by Boileau and Narçejac, Groenewald, and Dresden and Vestdijk. The classification approach used in this study is based on the characteristic features that distinguish a detective story from other genres. The most important characteristic of the detective story is mystery. The concept of mystery is therefore explained in detail, and various sub-genres classified according to the presence of one (occasionally more) of the following elements: (a) the real character of the detective is a mystery, (b) the name of the criminal is a mystery, (c) the name of the victim is a mystery, (d) the evidence that reveals the mystery at the end, and (e) the investigation that reveals the mystery. The different narrative techniques that authors can use to keep the mystery concealed so as to arouse the readers’ interest are explored. Methods to build tension and suspense in a narrative are also investigated. Lately some researchers of Sepedi detective stories have encountered problems in dealing with works that have both mystery and romantic sub-plots. This research study therefore mentions the difference between a detective story and a love story. It is not unusual for a detective story author to bring love affairs into the narrative, because these can be used to relieve tension. In the closing chapter, short remarks are made about the third layer of the text, namely style. Dresden and Vestdijk’s arguments concerning style are taken as the basis for these remarks. They discuss a curious characteristic of detective plots. This is that, though emotional and disturbing acts such as murder or rape are central to a detective story, the mystery surrounding these acts in the plot of the story turns the story into a puzzle rather like a mathematical problem, which is gradually solved as the plot progresses, with the result that the criminal is not viewed negatively. Whether or not he/she is punished is not a central issue; sometimes the criminal even escapes punishment through committing suicide. Death in this type of story has no meaning. This emotional independence is what forms the basis of the detective author’s style. / Thesis (DLitt ( African Languages))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / African Languages / unrestricted

L’objectif de la thèse était de réaliser la première édition critique du manuscrit français 9198 de la BnF attribué à Jehan Miélot et commandité, au XVe siècle, par Philipe le Bon, duc de Bourgogne. Ce manuscrit contient la compilation intitulée : La Vie et miracles de Nostre Dame qui constitue la mise en prose de miracles en vers du XIIIe siècle. D’un point de vue philologique, le but était d’étudier le rapport entre les formes des textes versifiés en ancien français et les formes en moyen français de la compilation. Le travail philologique comprend la transcription du manuscrit, un apparat critique, un glossaire, un index lemmatisé, l’index des noms propres et une analyse grammaticale des traits dialectaux de l’œuvre qui reflètent la phonétique du dialecte picard. La problématique sur laquelle repose cette recherche est double. D’un point de vue philologique, il est question d’éclairer le rapport entre les formes anciennes, qu’offrent les textes versifiés en ancien français du XIIIe siècle, et les formes modernes en moyen français du recueil de Jehan Miélot. En puisant des exemples à la fois dans les récits de miracles versifiés du XIIIe siècle et dans la compilation du XVe siècle, cette étude permet de situer le recueil dans le contexte de la tradition médiévale des récits miraculaires de la Vierge Marie

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The aim of the thesis is to provide a comprehensive view of the works of Samuel Beckett from the beginning to the novel Molloy. It is based on analysis of individual works and the subsequent attempt to uncover their interconnections. The thesis is divided into three parts: theory, poetry and prose. The first part deals mainly with the concept of incoherent reality which Beckett speaks about for the first time in his essay Proust and then returns to in other texts. In the novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women he makes it the basis of his own aesthetic. Behind the phenomena of the outer world lies chaos and nothingness and the artist's task is to integrate it into his work. The second part discusses the changes in the subject of the poems, his being or not being in particular surroundings, the amount of literary allusions, the themes and the form of the poems, above all the particular techniques Beckett uses and the degree of their regularity and elaboration. The third part raises similar questions about prose. The unquestionable centre of Beckett's poems and prose is the subject of the poems and the main character, characterized by tension between inside and outside. The change in the character is caused by outweighing of the tendency to stay inside. This also results in the reduction in allusions...

The focus of this diploma thesis is the reflection of environmental issues as reflected in post-war Czech prose. I'm doing so through several titles which were chosen on the basis of my resarch. Firstly I introduced their environmental content and character, then I juxtaposed these titles through hermeneutic approach. The comparison brought up several motives and characteristics these titles have in common, I also described which environmental issues are presented, and how they are depicted in these text. I put an emphasis on the context of the observed period (especially the political situation) in which these texts were created. This context is also presented in the chapter about environmental situation on the Czech territory and in the chapter focused on the historical course of Czech post-war prose. I'm introducing an ecocriticism as a part of a literary science and discussing the reception of environmenal issues in Czech prose in general. Key words Czech post-war prose, environmental issue, hermeneutics, ecocriticism

The aim of this thesis is to analyse nine contemporary Czech debuts that were published during the 2010s and that were written by authors who were born in the 1980s or in the late 1970s. Based on the thematic analysis and analysis of narrative modes the debuts are compared mutually and placed widely in the context of the contemporary Czech prose. Published reviews of the analysed debuts are considered in this thesis too. Not only because these reviews are almost only available secondary literature related to the theme, the aim of this thesis is also to analyse literary critical context, and how it was shaped by the reviews. Debuts that are analysed in the thesis are (in the order of publish date): Pálenka by Matěj Hořava, Spoušť by Sára Vybíralová, Do tmy by Anna Bolavá, Anežka by Viktorie Hanišová, Augustin Zimmermann by Zuzana Kultánová, Stvoření by Eugen Liška, jr., Malinka by Dita Táborská, Do vnitrozemí by Vladimíra Valová, Lapači prachu by Lucie Faulerová.