ABSTRACTS, KEYWORDS AND CONTACT DETAILS
Author
Paul Titchmarsh
Title of the Article
“Tell everything as it is – no better and no worse:” Images of the West in Washington Irving and Mark Twain
Abstract
In the United States of the nineteenth-century, the struggle to liberate American writing from European influences took many forms, but one prophecy was that a literature of the West would amount to an American coming of age. The prophecy remains unfulfilled and as one commentator has argued, all the fiction and nonfiction concerning the Frontier “can best be expressed in the image of a Western man straddling his vast empire in splendour, yet standing with his back to the West and looking eastward with awe and reverence” (Robert Lee, From West to East). To explore this proposition, I wish briefly to examine two texts, Washington Irving’s A Tour on the Prairies (1835) and Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872). In Irving’s Tour, for instance, we are given an account by a well-educated easterner, in which the actual details of Western life and idiom are censored into the picturesque, whilst Twain’s Roughing It is written from the position of a wide-eyed innocent. Both approaches tend to distort the truth. In the work of both authors, the romance of the West takes over from reality and it can be argued that in both cases the disorder of frontier life was kept outside texts, which were written for a predominantly eastern audience. The question posed, then, concerns the way the West was turned into a pastoral world by these authors.
Keywords
the Frontier, the West, pastoral, Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies, Mark Twain, Roughing It, Robert Lee, From West to East
Contact
Paul Titchmarsh
Faculty of Modern Philology and Social Sciences
University of Pannonia
Egyetem utca 10
8200 Veszprém
Hungary
E-mail: paultitchmarsh@yahoo.co.uk
Author
Karla Kovalová
Title of the Article
“We the human Family“: Revisions of American National History in Contemporary Slave Narratives
Abstract
The paper discusses two contemporary slave narratives, Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979) and J. California Cooper’s Family (1991) in order to demonstrate how African American women writers revision American past. More specifically, the paper demonstrates how both Butler and Cooper challenge the constructed ideas about American national identity, the understanding of which has been shaped by notions of family. Foregrounding miscegenation in their own specific ways (Butler via an interracial marriage that may be read as a “trope of integration”; Cooper via a “multicultural project” in which the history of humankind is presented as a narrative of miscegenation), both writers recast the American nation as a family whose members share a common history.
Keywords
African American literature, American national history, contemporary slave narratives, revision of the past, Octavia Butler, Kindred, J. California Cooper, Family
Contact
Karla Kovalová
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts
University of Ostrava
Reální 5
701 03 Ostrava
Czech Republic
E-mail: karla.kovalova@osu.cz
Author
Christopher E. Koy
Title of the Article
The Reformulation of Ethnological Sources and Orientalist Discourse in Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King
Abstract
When Saul Bellow composed his renowned novel Henderson the Rain King fifty years ago, his undergraduate studies of anthropology under the Africanist Melville Herskovics exerted a significant influence. This paper considers the sources of many of Bellow’s descriptions of East and West African tribes in the novel. Where Bellow diverts from these sources, his changes will be considered in light of Edward Said’s concept of ”Orientalist discourse” as set out in Orientalism.
Keywords
Edward Said, Orientalist discourse, Melville Herskovics, stereotypes, colonialism, Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King
Contact
Christopher E. Koy
Department of English Studies
Faculty of Education
University of South Bohemia
Jeronýmova 10
371 15 České Budějovice
Czech Republic
E-mail: koy@pf.jcu.cz
Author
Stanislav Kolář
Title of the Article
Dara Horn – A New Voice in Contemporary Jewish American Fiction
Abstract
This essay introduces the contemporary Jewish American novelist Dara Horn. It concentrates on her second novel The World to Come, published in 2006. In this novel, in which Horn mixes various genres, we follow the mysterious story of the Ziskind family from Russia to America. The family history is seen through the history of a Marc Chagall painting that once accompanied the life of the protagonist Benjamin Ziskind. This essay attempts to present Dara Horn as an author with a deep knowledge of the history, culture, and religion of the Jewish people.
Keywords
Jewish American fiction, Dara Horn, The World to Come, Marc Chagall, multilayered narrative, family roots, antisemitism, Jewishness
Contact
Stanislav Kolář
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts
University of Ostrava
Reální 5
701 03 Ostrava
Czech Republic
E-mail: stanislav.kolar@osu.cz
Author
Pavel Sedláček
Title of the Article
Divergence of Canadian and American Cities
Abstract
The article outlines the evolution of Urban Geography approaches to the cities and elaborates the idea of the cities as multi spatial “bodies”. Further on it compares the development of Canadian and American cities and points out the main differences, mainly those regarding the theme of sustainability.
Keywords
Urban space, urban planning, Urban Geography, sustainability, Canadian city, American city
Contact
Pavel Sedláček
Department of Languages
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Brno University of Technology
Technická 3058/10
616 00 Brno
Czech Republic
E-mail: sedlacep@feec.vutbr.cz
Author
Irena Přibylová
Title of the Article
Shape Notes, Gospels and Spirituals: Rediscovering Spirituality in the 21st Century
Abstract
Spirituals, gospels and Sacred harp songs (recorded on paper with the help of specific form of shape notes) represent a strong 19th century American cultural tradition. Their lyrics contributed to the originality of the independent American literature. In the 20th century, these songs left Church environment and made themselves at home in popular culture too. In the Czech lands, their acceptance was given mainly thanks to the strong rhythm and emotional performance. The Czech Republic is a post-communist country with the highest percentage of atheists. Despite that, Czechs like sacred music, especially American spirituals and gospels. In the following lines I would like to show where modern roots and limits of this interest are and what challenges the Czechs have had in facing the perception of American sacred music after 1989.
Keywords
American music, gospel, spirituals, Sacred harp songs, shape notes, perception of American sacred music
Contact
Irena Přibylová
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Education
Masaryk University
Poříčí 945/9
601 77 Brno
Czech Republic
E-mail: pribylova@ped.muni.cz
Author
Milada Franková
Title of the Article
Sarah Waters’s Monument to Women of World War II
Abstract
British women’s visions of equality and acknowledgement of their contribution to the World War II effort were soon revised for them after the war was over. They were sent back to their traditional role to keep the hearth and home. It was not until the year 2005 that a monument was erected in Whitehall in London – the Memorial to the Women of World War II – eerily evocative by its array of nameless, empty uniforms of the lack of recognition accorded to those who wore them. A year later, in 2006, Sarah Waters in her novel The Night Watch filled some of these reluctantly abandoned uniforms with bodies as well as faces and gave them names, albeit fictional. The paper reads Waters’ story as a pointed individual account of the visions and revisions of the countless, for the most part faceless and nameless war women commemorated by the Whitehall memorial, sixty years on.
Keywords
British WWII fiction, women in WWII, Sarah Waters, The Night Watch, the Memorial to the Women of World War II, Whitehall memorial
Contact
Milada Franková
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts
Masaryk University
Arna Nováka 1/1
602 00 Brno
Czech Republic
E-mail: frankova@phil.muni.cz
Author
Bożena Kucała
Title of the Article
In search of Ellis Bell: Emma Tennant’s Heathcliff’s Tale
Abstract
Like several of Tennant’s books, Heathcliff’s Tale is a revision of a canonical English novel. Wuthering Heights has continued to intrigue readers ever since its publication, partly owing to the disturbing gaps in the story which provoke various, even contradictory readings. Just as the central character in Bronte’s novel remains mysterious, so the authorship of the novel has been subject to reinterpretations. Published under a pseudonym, the novel was initially ascribed to Emily’s brother, but establishing the correct authorship posed further questions pertaining to the sources of Emily Brontë’s inspiration. These questions are imaginatively pondered in Tennant’s neo-Victorian novel. Heathcliff’s Tale reinterprets Wuthering Heights by completing the gaps inserted by Brontë in the original version as well as draws attention to its own artifice by imitating and enhancing the structural complexity of the original. Tennant’s book is analysed here as representative of the literary dialogue with the Victorian past undertaken by a considerable group of contemporary English novels.
Keywords
Neo-Victorian fiction, literary revision, Wuthering Heights, Emma Tennant, Heathcliff’s Tale, Emily Brontë, Ellis Bell
Contact
Bożena Kucała
Institute of English Philology
ul. prof. S.Łojasiewicza 4 (Kampus UJ)
30-348 Kraków
Poland
E-mail: bkucala@o2.pl
Author
Kamila Vránková
Title of the Article
The Theme of Otherness and the Role of Dialogue in Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea
Abstract
The role of dialogue is frequently emphasized in Jane Eyre (1847), being related to the problem of knowledge and its influence on the quality of mutual relationship. In this respect, the absence of the dialogue results in increasing estrangement and alienation. In Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), the theme is further developed to intensify the tension between the search for the meaning and for the expression of the emotional intensity. In my paper, the concept of the dialogue in both novels is considered against the background of the ideas of Bakhtin, Gadamer, Deleuze and Levinas.
Keywords
Otherness, alienation, dialogue, Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Bakhtin, Gadamer, Deleuze, Levinas
Contact
Kamila Vránková
Department of English Studies
Faculty of Education
University of South Bohemia
Jeronýmova 10
371 15 České Budějovice
Czech Republic
E-mail: vrankova@pf.jcu.cz
Author
Petra Smažilová
Title of the Article
Group Dynamics and the Dramatic Surge of British Feminism in Cloud Nine
Abstract
The play Cloud Nine (1979) belongs to a period in which British society, and especially women, were going through dramatic changes; the late 1970s represent the period of group dynamics, radicalization of women’s movement and the recognition of women’s self-reliance. The purpose of this essay is to prove that common dynamics and contemporary discussions influenced the life of Betty, the character who was, when considering other female characters in the play, most set in her ways.
Keywords
Contemporary British drama, Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine, Women’s Liberation Movement, second wave of feminism
Contact
Petra Smažilová
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: petra.smazilova@upce.cz
Author
Roman Trušník
Title of the Article
A Drag Queen in Your Living Room: Michael Cunningham’s Revision of Assimilative Gay Fiction
Abstract
The paper explores Michael Cunningham’s revision of the concept of assimilative gay fiction in his novel Flesh and Blood (1995). Unlike other authors of this stream of gay fiction, who avoid the central elements of American gay culture in their novels, Cunningham brings the themes of AIDS, camp, and drag queens into the literary mainstream and in this way performs a revision of the very concept of assimilative fiction.
Keywords
American gay fiction, homosexuality, assimilative gay fiction, Michael Cunningham, Flesh and Blood, AIDS, drag queens
Contact
Roman Trušník
Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín
Faculty of Humanities
Mostní 5139
760 01 Zlín
Czech Republic
E-mail: trusnik@fhs.utb.cz
Author
Petr Chalupský
Title of the Article
London Re-experienced – Peter Ackroyd’s Historiographic Revisioning of the City
Abstract
This paper focuses on arguably the best contemporary British chronicler of historical and literary London, Peter Ackroyd. As its theoretical point of departure it deals with his seminal work on the city’s intertextual and discursive nature over the course of its development, London: The Biography (2000). In order to illustrate Ackroyd’s fictional historiographic treatment of different historical periods of London, two of his novels have been chosen – Hawksmoor (1985) and Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem (1994), while three others, Chatterton (1987), The Clerkenwell Tales (2003) and The Lambs of London (2004), are also referred to. All these texts are discussed from the point of view of textual and thematic interconnectedness, the mixing of the factual and fictitious in creating London’s topography, and the influences of the city’s milieu on the characters’ psyches.
Keywords
Contemporary British fiction, Peter Ackroyd, The Biography, Hawksmoor, Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, The Clerkenwell Tales, literary topography, city, London, historiographic fiction
Contact
Petr Chalupský
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Education
Charles University in Prague
Celetná 13
110 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic
E-mail: petr.chalupsky@pedf.cuni.cz
Author
Ladislav Vít
Title of the Article
W.H. Auden: The Poet and the Sea: The Sea and the Mirror
Abstract
The endeavour of modernist authors to ‘make it new’ involved a significant revision of the use of imagery. This paper focuses on W.H. Auden and the ways in which he used the image of the sea. It shows that the contours of the poet’s symbolic landscape changed in parallel with his dynamic ideological development. As a whole, the paper argues that there is a discernible relationship between the two phenomena, which, however, remains to be defined by scholarship.
Keywords
W.H.Auden, Poetics of Place, Ideology, the sea, literary topography, imagery, modernism
Contact
Ladislav Vít
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: ladislav.vit@upce.cz
Authors
Natalia Orlova, Katya Nemtchinova
Title of the Article
NES and NNES Teachers: A Cross-cultural Comparison of Teaching Styles
Abstract
The paper investigates the differences and similarities in teaching styles from a cross-cultural perspective. Although the dichotomy between native and non-native English speaking teachers has been the focus of numerous publications in the field, various elements of their teaching styles, in terms of both similarities and differences, have received little attention. For this purpose, authors surveyed teachers in the U.S. and the Czech Republic to analyze their general modes of classroom behavior, teaching methods, and self-image. Empirical evidence received through the survey does not fully support the idea that cultural factors influence certain aspects of classroom practices and teaching style.
Keywords
teaching styles, native English speaking teachers, non-native English speaking teachers, cross-cultural, classroom behavior, teacher´s self-image
Contacts
Natalia Orlova
English Department
Faculty of Education
University of J. E. Purkyně
České mládeže 8
400 96 Ústí nad Labem
Czech Republic
E-mail: natalia.orlova@ujep.cz
Katya Nemtchinova
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Seattle Pacific University
3307 3rd Ave W
Seattle, WA 98119
USA
E-mail: katya@spu.edu
Author
Ivan Burda
Title of the Article
From Books to the Silver Screen: Transformations of Michael Cunningham’s Fiction
Abstract
By 1999 when Michael Cunningham published The Hours not many people had known his name although he had already written two other novels. The success of The Hours followed by a movie of same name made Cunningham world-wide known. Soon afterward he himself wrote a screenplay for another movie based upon his earlier novel A Home at the End of the World. This paper deals with some differences between the novels and their film adaptations.
Keywords
Michael Cunningham, The Hours, A Home at the End of the World, novel and screenplay, film adaptation, modernism
Contact
Ivan Burda
Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín
Faculty of Humanities
Mostní 5139
760 01 Zlín
Czech Republic
Author
Lukáš Krincvaj
Title of the Article
Star Trek and the American Society of the 20th Century
Abstract
This paper explores the effect of the television series Star Trek on the equal rights struggle in the 20th century USA society. Analysis of two main topics – the fight for equal rights of minorities and the position of women in society – shows that by depicting minorities as equal partners and placing women into better positions, the author of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry prepared the television audience for the changes to come and helped them to be more receptive to things “alien” to them.
Keywords
Sci-fi TV series, Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek, gender roles, racial issues
Contact
Lukáš Krincvaj
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: lukas.krincvaj@student.upce.cz
Author
Lucie Dlouhá
Title of the Article
The Dreams of Pecola Breedlove and Richard Wright
Abstract
The paper introduces two child protagonists, Pecola Breedlove and Richard Wright, and analyzes and compares their difficult childhoods, influenced by the tragic impact of racisms and long-time effects of slavery.
Keywords
Slavery, racial relations, childhood, Black Boy, Richard Wright, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Contact
Lucie Dlouhá
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: lucie.dlouha@student.upce.cz
Author
Barbora Moravová
Title of the Article
African-American Slave Childhood
Abstract
The paper focuses on some issues of slave children’s lives in bondage. A significant source for learning about the African American slavery in the Antebellum South are the slave narratives written by (former) slaves. These narratives were mainly written to document events and experiences of slavery and also to add arguments for the growing abolitionist movement. The research of this paper is based on a comparative study of the narrative works Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass and Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington. These narratives provide detailed descriptions of how children lived during slavery as well as how they experienced violence and racism.
Keywords
Slave Childhood, American slavery, racism, violence, slave narratives, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Booker T. Washington, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Up from Slavery
Contact
Barbora Moravová
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: barbora.moravova@student.upce.cz
