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Mihaela Culea (Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacău, Romania) Images of the Moral Order: (Im)Morality and Redemption in Daniel Defoe’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders |
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Michaela Fojtíková (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic) George MacDonald’s Fairy Tale Characters: Variations of the Fairy Tale Conventions |
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Karolina Kolenda (Jagiellonian University, Poland) Bridging Gulfs in Life and Literature: Henry Green and the Process of “Going Over” |
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Petr Chalupský (Charles University, Czech Republic) Of Stories and Men: Discursive Self-fashioning and the Confessional Narrative of Love and Self-hatred in Louis de Bernières’ A Partisan’s Daughter |
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Mária Kiššová (Constantine the Philosopher University, Slovakia) Subversive and Disturbing Concepts in What Becomes by A. L. Kennedy |
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Olga Roebuck (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic) The Scenology of Landscape in The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds |
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Michaela Weiß (Silesian University, Czech Republic) Will Eisner’s Contract with Comics |
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Miloš Blahút (University of Prešov, Slovakia) Subversion of Literary Conventions in John Irving’s Novels The World According To Garp and Last Night in Twisted River |
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Vladimíra Fonfárová (Tomáš Baťa University, Czech Republic) Becoming a Trickster and Gaining Vision as Parts of the Survival Process in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing |
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Karla Kovalová (University of Ostrava, Czech Republic) “A scared little girl, all alone with a scared woman:” Clover’s (Not)Telling Secrets |
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Šárka Bubíková (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic) The Literary Image of Man in the Process of Becoming: Variations of the Bildungsroman Genre in English and American Literature |
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Daniel Sampey (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic) Chicago, Greenwich Village and Provincetown: American theatre becomes little |
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Jan Suk (University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic) Seeing the Seeing the Seeing: Understanding the Spectatorship of Forced Entertainment |
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Hana Waisserová (Masaryk University, Czech Republic) Gendered Representations in Eastern Cultural Production: Construct of the Indigenous Woman Gauri in Lagaan and the Impacts of Nationalism and Cultural Globalization on South Asian Womanhood |
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Libuše Hornová (University of Pardubice, Czech Republic) Description, Action, or Attitude? A Translator’s Remark on Two Novels by Romesh Gunesekera and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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Student Contribution |
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Jana Brandová (University of Pardubice) Race Relations in Two Episodes of South Park and The Simpsons |
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Book Reviews |
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Ladislav Vít The Rhyme and the Marble: Recent Multilingual and Multimedia Translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Review of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets for the First Time Globally Reprinted. A Quatercenteneary Anthology 1609-2009 edited by Manfred Pfister and Jürgen Gutsch) |
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Šárka Bubíková Writing Trauma (Review of Reflections of Trauma in Selected Works of Postwar American and British Literature by Stanislav Kolář, Zuzana Buráková and Katarína Šanderová) |
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Olga Roebuck A Jew, an American, and a Writer (Review of Jewishness as Humanism in Bernard Malamud’s Fiction by Michaela Náhliková) |
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Bohuslav Mánek From Piers Plowman to A.L. Kennedy: A History of British Satire (Review of British Literary Satire in Historical Perspective by Ema Jelínková) |
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Michaela Fojtíková The Book that Changed Children’s Literature (Review of Fenomén Harry Potter v Recepčných Súradniciach by Michal Vančo) |
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ABSTRACTS, KEYWORDS AND CONTACT DETAILS
Author
Mihaela Culea
Title of the Article
Images of the Moral Order: (Im)Morality and Redemption in Daniel Defoe’s The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
Abstract
The article starts from investigating the human preoccupation with the role and importance of divine providence through the centuries, with special emphasis on eighteenth-century English images of providence and divine authority, while observing the way in which the old tradition of magic and providential action was, during the same century, gradually overcome by the influence of Christian precepts and beliefs. Eighteenth-century England does not appear, at first sight, as a particularly religious age. Yet, religious themes pervade almost all the novels of the period, focusing on issues of morality or immorality. The recurrent invocation of, and belief in, God’s guidance of humans was also related to human sinful practices under such forms as theft, adultery, or prostitution. The article analyses the way in which images of providence and human practices related to morality or immorality played an important role on the cultural scene of the eighteenth-century England, particularly in Daniel Defoe’s novel The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders and Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. Special attention is paid to some key social and cultural agents such as the priest or, at the opposite pole, the prostitute seeking redemption. Investigating these characters’ relation to the divine order and its injunctions, the article intends to reveal their moral and spiritual accomplishment or failure.
Keywords
Earthly order, Divine order, Providence, redemption, fate, fortune, (im)morality, penitence, Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones.
Contact
Mihaela Culea
Faculty of Letters
Vasile Alecsandri University of Bacău
600115 – Bacău
România
E-mail: mcl.ub.80@gmail.com
Author
Michaela Fojtíková
Title of the Article
George MacDonald’s Fairy Tale Characters: Variations of the Fairy Tale Conventions
Abstract
Despite the fact that George MacDonald wrote more than 90 different books during his life, only a small number seem to have caught the attention of scholars. The only comprehensive study is the psychological interpretation by Robert Lee Wolff The Golden Key. The major shortcoming of Wolff’s analysis is its subjectivity, in that Wolff includes only a psychological interpretation of the eleven fairy tales. The present paper provides an analysis of characters in George MacDonald’s stories. MacDonald has been referred to as an “unconventional traditionalist”. He proves how well he is acquainted with the genre conventions of the traditional fairy tale, then comments on and toys with these conventions, which include parody, irony, and puns. In order to discuss the characters in George MacDonald’s fairy tales, we will divide them into two large groups: human and supernatural characters.
Keywords
Fairy tale conventions, the supernatural, characters, innovations, fantasy, George MacDonald
Contact
Michaela Fojtíková
Department of Foreign Languages
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: michaela.fojtíková@upce.cz
Author
Karolina Kolenda
Title of the Article
Bridging Gulfs in Life and Literature: Henry Green and the Process of “Going Over”
Abstract
Henry Green, a writer whose works were published between 1926 and 1952, has been traditionally regarded as standing between the two traditions that dominated in the literary landscape of the 1930s and 1940s in Britain, namely modernism and (new) realism. The debate on Green as either an experimental modernist or socially-engaged leftist realist has led to the production of an image of an artist (writer) whose position in the canon of British literature of this period is fascinating, yet highly problematic. Focusing on selected prose of Henry Green, namely Living (1929), Party Going (1939) and Pack My Bag: A Self-Portrait (1940), this paper discusses the ways the subject of an a writer is negotiated through on the one hand the subversion of established literary traditions, and on the other through the active engagement in the social problems performed in the act of “going over”.
Keywords
Henry Green, Living, Party Going, Pack My Bag: A Self-Portrait, modernism, realism, “going over,” artistic identity
Contact
Karolina Kolenda
Institute of English Philology
Jagiellonian University
ul. prof. S.Łojasiewicza 4 (Kampus UJ)
30-348 Kraków
Poland
E-mail: karolina.kolenda@uj.edu.pl
Author
Petr Chalupský
Title of the Article
Of Stories and Men: Discursive Self-fashioning and the Confessional Narrative of Love and Self-hatred in Louis de Bernières’ A Partisan’s Daughter
Abstract
Louis de Bernières is known especially for his international bestseller Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) and the historical saga Birds Without Wings (2004). His most recent novel, A Partisan’s Daughter (2008), represents a strikingly different kind of writing, much more subtle and intimate and therefore less ambitious in terms of its plot construction and thematic structure. Through the use of diverse narrative and stylistic techniques, particularly that of the male mock-testimonial, de Bernières manages to explore many of the thematic concerns of his previous works as well as several new ones.
Keywords
Narration, male testimonial, mid-life crisis, identity self-fashioning, storytelling, personal and official history
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
Mária Kiššová
Title of the Article
Subversive and Disturbing Concepts in What Becomes by A. L. Kennedy
Abstract
Scottish author A.L. Kennedy is one of the key representatives of the modern short-story in English. Several of her collections – including Night Geometry and the Garscadden Trains (1990), Now That You’re Back (1994), Original Bliss (1997) and Indelible Acts (2002) – have won prestigious British literary prizes. This paper closely examines her fifth collection What Becomes (2009), in which the twelve stories deal with isolation, loneliness, depression, and a complete lack of love. Kennedy’s unique poetics reflects her interest in formal innovations; she shows passion toward and sympathy with the weird, awkward, ugly and shocking. Her short-stories disturb the reader through the particular formal devices (the special use of typography) and thematic concepts (showing the disturbances of everyday life).
Keywords
Short story, A.L. Kennedy, What Becomes, formal innovations, typography
Contact
Mária Kiššová
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts
Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra
Štefánikova 67
949 74 Nitra
Slovakia
E-mail: mkissova@ukf.sk
Author
Olga Roebuck
Title of the Article
The Scenology of Landscape in The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
Abstract
This text presents various possibilities of looking at landscape from a literary perspective, allowing the possibilities of interpreting it as a literary text or a theatrical scene. Such theoretical claims are tested in the analysis of several characters from Adam Foulds’s novel The Quickening Maze.
Keywords
Landscape as a cultural artefact, scenology of landscape, literary landscape, John Clare, Matthew Allen, Adam Foulds, The Quickening Maze
Contact
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: olga.roebuck@upce.cz
Author
Michaela Weiß
Title of the Article
Will Eisner’s Contract with Comics
Abstract
The paper deals with formal innovations in A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories by Will Eisner, one of the forefathers of modern American comics. Eisner realized that comics had much greater potential and started experimenting with its form and content. He wanted to free comics of the superhero label and create artistically more complex works. When he published A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories, it was advertised as “a graphic novel”. Since then the term has been widely used by publishers, critics and writers, even though not all of them agree on its definition. Moreover, as the title suggests Eisner’s book is not a novel but a collection of short stories written in the form of American Jewish immigration narrative, combining autobiography, memoirs and fiction. In this graphic novel Eisner not only revived the immigration narratives in a new medium, but also crossed the boundaries of American comics by presenting a vital and original form that influenced following generations of artists.
Keywords
Will Eisner, graphic novel, American Jewish comics, immigration narrative
Contact
Michaela Weiss
Department of Foreign Languages
Silesian University in Opava
Masarykova třída 343/37
746 01 Opava
Czech Republic
E-mail: michaela.weiss@fpf.slu.cz
Author
Miloš Blahút
Title of the Article
Subversion of Literary Conventions in John Irving’s Novels The World According To Garp and Last Night in Twisted River
Abstract
John Irving is a prominent American storyteller whose plot-driven novels are full of memorable characters. Despite his influences from Victorian novelists, his narratives are unconventional and complex, with various discourses intertwined. Irving’s novels, The World According to Garp and Last Night in Twisted River contain absurd "flat" characters and grotesque incidents. Violence, death and humour are dominant in The World According to Garp. Powerful depictions of the main character, Danny, and the way his imaginative world works parallels the "real" story (Irving’s fictional story). By incorporating into his stories various popular genres such as detective story Irving transgresses the boundary between high and low art, and through metafictional techniques he, as Patricia Waugh would put it, “lays bare the conventions of realistic techniques.”
Keywords
Metafiction, framing devices, violence, death, postmodern, John Irving, The World According to Garp, Last Night in Twisted River http://www.unipo.sk/en/
Contact
Department of British and American Studies
Faculty of Arts
University of Prešov
17. Novembera 15
080 01 Prešov
Slovakia
E-mail: milos.blahut@unipo.sk
Author
Vladimíra Fonfárová
Title of the Article
Becoming a Trickster and Gaining Vision as Parts of the Survival Process in Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing
Abstract
This article focuses on survival as a key pattern in Margaret Atwood’s novel Surfacing (1972) and explores the process the nameless narrator of the novel undergoes in order to reject her role of a victim and to fight for her survival as a complete, full-value human being. The first step in this process is becoming a trickster creature, as identified by Paul Radin in his monograph Trickster (1956) and the second is gaining vision, as described by Sharon R. Wilson in her essay “Blindness and Survival in Margaret Atwood’s Major Novels”.
Keywords
Canadian literature, Trickster, Margaret Atwood, Surfacing, gaining vision, survival, visual imagery, victimization
Contact
Tomas Bata University in Zlín
Faculty of Humanities
Mostní 5139
760 01 Zlín
Czech Republic
E-mail: fonfarova@fhs.utb.cz
Author
Karla Kovalová
Title of the Article
“A scared little girl, all alone with a scared woman:” Clover’s (Not)Telling Secrets
Abstract
This paper uses Leslie W. Lewis’ concept of secret telling and Alicia Otano’s theory of child perspective to discuss Dori Sanders’ novel, Clover (1990). In choosing a black child protagonist to narrate her story of having to live with a white stepmother, Sanders successfully negotiates cultural differences to foster cross-racial understanding. This paper demonstrates how the child serves as a mediator between cultures, bridging the gaps that separate them by choosing to tell or withhold family secrets.
Keywords
African American fiction, child perspective, Clover, cultural differences, Dori Sanders, racial differences, secret (telling), the South
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.kovalová@osu.cz
Author
Šárka Bubíková
Title of the Article
The Literary Image of Man in the Process of Becoming: Variations of the Bildungsroman Genre in English and American Literature
Abstract
This article briefly outlines a history of Bildungsroman and provides an overview of theories of the genre and a critical assessment of them. It argues that the genre, notwithstanding some critical opinions to the contrary, is still a very potent literary form despite the fact that it came into existence in a particular historical and literary situation of eighteenth-century Germany. The genre’s flexibility allowed for variations and modifications that ensured its contemporary viability in Anglo-American literatures. While the concern with the individual’s emergence from an immature state of childhood to adult maturity, and with individual’s socialization remaining the core focus of the Bildungsroman, studies of the form have lately become involved in the discussions of ethnic and racial identification, of biculturality, of the situation of an individual in a liminal position. This makes Bildungsroman a genre especially important in contemporary American literature
Keywords
Literary genre; Bildungsroman; Bildungsroman in English; female Bildungsroman; ethnic Bildungsroman
Contact
Šárka Bubíková
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: sarka.bubikova@upce.cz
Author
Daniel Sampey
Title of the Article
Chicago, Greenwich Village and Provincetown: American theatre becomes little
Abstract
At the outset of the 20th century, dozens of small theatre companies sprang up across the United States. Towards the end of the 1910s, divisions began to emerge in many of these organizations. These splits may be categorized generally as between a politically radical or artistically experimental faction against a more traditional contingent seeking the larger audiences which would be attracted by higher production values. By the 1980s the Provincetown Players had become little more than a footnote in canonical American theatre history as the group that produced Eugene O’Neill’s first plays. Since then, however, another account has come forth that suggests a larger significance for the group. This narrative centers on George Cram Cook and Susan Glaspell’s dissatisfaction with the commercial ambitions the Washington Square Players and their decision to split from them. This story of the Provincetown group also features the fundamental contributions of women, particularly that of established novelist Glaspell, in all aspects of production during the early years of the Provincetown Players. The formative roles of women in other early 20th century American companies will be touched upon in this paper as well.
Keywords
American drama, little theatre movement, Provincetown Players, Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook, Eugene O’Neill
Contact
Daniel Paul Sampey
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: danielpaul.sampey@upce.cz
Author
Jan Suk
Title of the Article
Seeing the Seeing the Seeing: Understanding the Spectatorship of Forced Entertainment
Abstract
The present paper aims to explore the crucial role of the audience in the artistic strategies of Forced Entertainment, a leading contemporary British experimental theatre troupe. The paper attempts to highlight the shift of the role of audience towards the spectator as a witness, raising thus further ethical issues. Furthermore, the company´s insistence on the presence, realness and “failure” framed by the tools of postdramatic theory and the umbrella of Live Art create a new reading of the endless interplay between the theatre and its audiences, which is illustrated on two recent performances of Forced Entertainment, Showtime (1996) and Spectacular (2008).
Keywords
Forced Entertainment, Live Art, postdramatic theatre, contemporary British experimental theatre, ethics of spectatorship, Spectacular, Showtime.
Contact
Jan Suk
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Education
University of Hradec Králové
Rokitanského 62
500 03 Hradec Králové
Czech Republic
E-mail: jan.suk@uhk.cz
Author
Hana Waisserová
Title of the Article
Gendered Representations in Eastern Cultural Production: Construct of the Indigenous Woman Gauri in Lagaan and the Impacts of Nationalism and Cultural Globalization on South Asian Womanhood
Abstract
Feminine subjectivity in Bollywood films is constructed by film-makers and by the demand of audience fantasies as a miraculous mixture of contradictions. Is this traditional or transnational? Female constructs such as Gauri (the protagonist of Lagaan) expose traditional dichotomies deeply embedded in Indian culture. Women aspire to be powerless victimized women and powerful goddesses at the same time. Naturally, when a nationalist discourse shapes the images the feminist critic cannot but protest that such iconography degrades women by presenting them in simplistic oppositions. Yet, the feminist Amrita Basu observes that local women of power speak from positions of moral superiority conditioned by their chastity, and they represent no challenge to patriarchal values (Basu 1988). The image of Gauri in Lagaan seems to be the product of a similar schizophrenia, and gendered constructs of Indian vision (like Gauri) tend to be perceived as schematic creations of anticolonial nationalism, yet echoing transnational gender policies. Moreover, the film operates in a Neo-Victorian setting, examining the heritage of colonial pressures in post-colonial times. This setting allows for specific cultural, historical and political conditions to be delineated in the present, including a possible re-evaluation of gender roles in the third world. The cultural production of Bollywood emphasises the notion of reclaiming Indian women, who are constructed to resemble Sita or Radha in Indian mythology (Mishra 2002). Finally, Bollywood imagery supposedly becomes transnational (Thomas 1985). Lagaan shows the problematic accounts of official colonial history, and it allows the rediscovery of suppressed personal histories via constructs of memory, fantasy, narrative and myth.
Keywords
Gendered representations, Lagaan, South Asian womanhood, Indian film, cultural globalization, Amrita Basu, Rosie Thomas
Contact
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Education
Masaryk University
Poříčí 7
603 00 Brno
Czech Republic
E-mail: hwaisserova@gmail.com
Author
Libuše Hornová
Title of the Article
Description, Action, or Attitude? A Translator’s Remark on Two Novels by Romesh Gunesekera and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Abstract
Combining translation and linguistic studies, the article introduces two less-known immigrant writers Romesh Gunesekera and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and their novels Reef and The Mistress of Spices, which were both translated by the author. The novels reflect the social and political problems in Sri Lanka and India which make their citizens flee abroad. The stories are well narrated by poetic language and brought their authors international recognition. Especially the descriptive passages in both novels are very impressive and are considered here as specific language structures. A partial analysis of typical sentence elements of such passages in comparison with their Czech equivalents is the main aim of this article. Apart from that, a general comment on the main characters of the two stories and implications of different cultures are supplemented.
Keywords
Romesh Gunesekera, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices, Reef, translation studies, sentence structures, descriptive passage
Contact
Libuše Hornová
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: libuse.hornova@upce.cz
Author
Jana Brandová
Title of the Article
Race Relations in Two Episodes of South Park and The Simpsons
Abstract
This article focuses on the popular and controversial adult-oriented American cartoons, South Park and The Simpsons, and the manner in which these cartoons comment on the issue of race and ethnicity; specifically, the issue of the relationship between whites and blacks.
Keywords
Race, African-Americans, cartoons, South Park, The Simpsons
Contact
Jana Brandová
Department of English and American Studies
Faculty of Arts and Philosophy
University of Pardubice
Studentská 84
532 10 Pardubice
Czech Republic
E-mail: brandova@gyasos-prelouc.cz
