We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
The paper deals with some reflection modes concerning time, as well as its formation or figuration. Through the creation of several poets (namely A. de Lamartine, Ch. Baudelaire, J. Vrchlický, P. Verlaine) it analyses and compares their poetics of saisons, especially the represented meanings of autumn and of its manifestations and phenomena (e.g.: reminiscences, resignations, sorrows — vapours, hazes, dry and falling leaves).
More...
The subject of the present text is the complicated and ambiguous relationship between literature and history in the 20th century. The author has chosen to illustrate the complexity of this relationship by a short reflexion on three remarkable literary works that reflect, each in its own way, the historical dramas of the last century: The Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard, A Fable by William Faulkner, and The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary.
More...
The study deals with an analysis of the oniric themes in the works written by Jean Anouilh, one ofthe best-known French playwrights, whose plays are frequently appearing on stages in France aswell as the whole world. The oniric themes are represented by a variety of dreams, visions, somnambulism, nightmares and states when the spirit leaves the body during the sleeping hours. The analysis is performed on the plays Eurydice, Le Songe du Critique, Le Boulanger, la Boulangere et le Petit Mitronand L’Arrestation. Each time, the oniric theme is defined according to its distribution, function andthe role that it plays in the author’s creative strategy.
More...
Edward St Aubyn’s quintet of novels is very often interpreted in terms of trauma. Such an interpretation, based on the author’s confession that the novels are strongly autobiographical and that hewas sexually abused as a child by his own father, is no doubt justified. However, besides that, theyalso belong to a certain tradition: with Proust and Powell St Aubyn shares the setting of the novel,aristocracy and high society; same as them he unveils snobbery as an integral part of this society andhe shows in detail various mechanisms and forces that are active in this society. His novels, however,are remarkable in drawing a link between cruelty/abuse/sadism and snobbish detachment, whichhe sees as ultimately dehumanizing.
More...
The article focuses on two main struggles the Neapolitan language had to deal with in the 20th century. In the introduction, the text presents George Steiner’s theory which argues that people allaround the world use so many languages because one of the language’s principal function is to protect the culture and identity of its community against foreigners. In this article, this theory is applied on the Neapolitan and used to rationalize the fact that this southern Italian language survivedin the last century against all the odds. Two major threats are stated. The first one was the Fascist era,during which the regime tried to abolish all the dialects and make all citizens speak proper Italian.One of the means to achieve this was a school reform which was supposed to make children switchfluently from their dialect to Italian. The second major threat was closely connected to the expansionof mass media. Neapolitan speakers were slowly acquiring the language used on television, whichthey often did not fully understand. In consequence, the Neapolitan language was separated fromits oral tradition and, according to the Neapolitan playwright Annibale Ruccello, became superficial.In the end, the article claims that Neapolitan is still alive, illustrating this point with the quotationof the linguist De Blasi.
More...
The article discusses the uproar which resulted from the decision to translate Henrik Ibsen’s dramaPeer Gynt (1867) from one of the official written Norwegian languages (riksmål/bokmål) to the other(landsmål/nynorsk) in 1947/48 in connection with a theatre production which had its premiere inMarch 1948. Many Norwegians regard Peer Gynt as the greatest work of their national literature, andtherefore many of them considered it close to sacrilegious to stage it in nynorsk, the language whichIbsen did not use and, in fact, strongly disliked. Some Norwegians protested vehemently againsttranslating the drama to nynorsk, while others found the idea perfectly acceptable. The article thusoffers an interesting example of a split between two language cultures within one nation.
More...
The article deals with the legacy of Teodor de Wyzewa’s reflexions on Wagner/Wagnerism and theirsubstantial impact on French Symbolist writers. The requirement to actually overcome nationalboundaries and pertaining ideologies has been a major step in seeking to open up French literaturetowards major foreign influences. It has also contributed to shape and define modernism, albeit ina rather conservative and largely neo-classical fashion.
More...
The article deals with the evolution of the language of Brazilian regionalism in the second half ofthe 19th and the first decades of the 20th century. Beginning with O gaúcho and O sertanejo, “sertanist”novels by José de Alencar, it briefly comments on the “bilingualism” of the regionalist short-storiesof the turn of the century and their switching between the story-tellersʼ flowery language and theuncouth language of the rustic characters. Having examined the narrative shift to the first person narrative, capable of relating the personal experience of the villagers, it brings the example ofshort-stories penned by Simões Lopes Neto as a case of a successful transposition of the dialect ofRio Grande do Sul into a full literary language. This language conveys not only the peculiarity of the“gaúcho” narrator Blau Nunes but also a whole world-view of a character wedded to the archaic understanding of life.
More...
Hispano-American modernism, the period of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, brings abouta major renewal of literary creation, which allows a self-confident and decisive input of this region’sliteratures into modernity. The article briefly examines the key moments of this renewal, based onthe search for beauty and harmony and the desire for a perfect rhythm of the language to reflect therhythm of the universe; it also points out the connection with the incoming avant-garde.
More...
The article explores Pedro Henríquez Ureña’s concept of the language situation in Hispanic America.Although many different cultures with diverse language heritages coexist in this region, Spanishshould not be seen as an instrument of European colonisation and of the destruction of the originalculture. On the contrary, the specific elements of each community are reflected in the local Spanishvariants. The use of Spanish language does not force Hispanic American nations to lose their uniqueidentity, but it gives them the power of being understood by a significant part of the world and profitfrom the legacy of the family of Romance languages.
More...
The paper introduces Iyaric, the language of the Rastafari movement of Jamaica, as a creative reaction to the domination of European cultural patterns and as one of the main markers of Rastafariidentity. Besides the religious context of Iyaric, attention is also paid to the language situation of Jamaica as well as to the social and cultural context of its beginings.
More...
Arabizi, the romanized version of the Arabic writing system, is a phenomenon born with the dissemination of new technologies at the end of the 20th century. The first mobile phones and internetweren’t at first able to use other language systems than Latin. Thus Arabizi — a combination of thewords Arabi and Inglizi (Arab word for English) — emerged. It uses Latin alphabet and numerals toput down Arabic. The idea is not exactly new — there have been to be promoters of Latinized version of Arabic since the 19th century. Nowadays, Arabizi has its advocates as well as opponents. Thispaper maps the history of the phenomenon of Arabizi, it presents its basics and introduce the maineffects it has on the present-day Arab society.
More...
The author examines an articles written by the Italian Bohemist Angelo Maria Ripellino during theperiod from 1963 to 1973 for the Italian magazine L’Espresso, in which he reported on Prague culturaland political events, and asks to what extent his renowned essay Praga magica is conditioned by thetrauma of “1968”.
More...
The article analyzes two Petersburg texts by A.S. Pushkin: The Bronze Horseman: A Petersburg Taleand Queen of Spades. The author states that The Bronze Horseman is based on the dichotomy of theoriginal spontaneous water principle as opposed to the city’s static fundamentals. The horizontalwater element lacks a privileged and superior, authoritative position. On the contrary, the city isdominated by the privileged position of the creator, who controls the city’s hierarchy. This situation is also reflected in the text of the Queen of Spades, in which the author, Pushkin, loses the superior position and leaves the semantic initiative to free formation of meanings, which could be perceived as an ironic opposition to the author’s intention. The theme of the cards, the principle of theplay, the narrative of “pereskaz”, the dualism of the Petersburg scene and the constant position ofthe hero “ashore” bring spontaneity to the text structure and become a source of the free formationof meanings.
More...
The paper is built on the formulation by Vladimír Svatoň about the binary aesthetics of beauty andnobleness in modern literature from the 18th to the 20th century, and it outlines the historical lineof the aesthetics of nobleness from the ancient times until the present. Subsequently, there arisesa question of a possible transition from aesthetics to the poetics of shimmering as a part of a newpoetics following the constituent rules, grammars and algorithms of the creation of literary textsand events. At the same time, existential poetics, a means of expression and a manifestation of thesituation of human being, is reflected.
More...
The article dedicated to the memory of Vladimír Svatoň (1931–2018), an eminent Czech literaryscholar, specialist in Comparative and Russian literature, attempts an outline of the main themesand principles of his comparative literary analyses and reflections focusing particularly on the greatliterary and philosophical currents, on the “lasting shapes” of European aesthetics and poetics, theuniversal models and situations of artistic creations, its spiritual and cultural contexts. Svatoň’s contributions to the theory and the meaning of genres (novel, tragedy) or the typology of movements(Russian symbolism) are similarly fundamental.
More...
Vladimír Svatoň became a Russian literary studies scholar and a comparatist, but he approachedRussian literary studies not only in the narrow scope of Slavic studies, but in a wider context of theworld literature. He rarely, and only later in his life, commented on the conception of Slavic studiesand the possibilities of research in Slavic literatures. All of his comments betray a critical attitudetoward the traditionally oriented Slavic studies, which have been pervaded by the romantic spiritof the National Revival. In his opinion a hidden prerequisite of Slavic studies is, in fact, a misguidedidea that “Slavs form a historical unity, a specific area of culture, and therefore also a specific subject of studies”. Among the leading figures of Czech Slavic literary studies Svatoň respected KarelKrejčí , and some of Frank Wollman’s ideas took his attention. The paper notes also some excerptsfrom Svatoň’s correspondence, in which the author reflects on the subject of the Slavic studies andon some issues of the comparative studies in Slavic literatures.
More...
Burianová, Zuzana. Současná románová reflexe brazilské vojenské diktatury. Olomouc : Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2017, 122 s.
More...