English Essays

Nevím, jestli jsem to na Jumpspaceu na plnou pusu někdy zmiňoval, ale filmové vědy nejsou tak docela můj obor. Vysokoškolským zaměřením jsem anglista, takže kromě páru odchozených filmových seminářů trávím posledních několik let převážně studiem anglického jazyka, anglofonních literatur a kultur. Filmy, seriály a Hollywood všeobecně mě prostě jen hodně zajímají, mám v nich trochu přehled a chci se o ty nabyté vědomosti nějakým způsobem podělit.

Anglistické pozadí je však na Jumpspaceu dost znát, ať už výběrem témat, nebo způsobem, jakým o nich píšu. A aby si pod tou anglistikou kdokoliv dokázal alespoň něco představit, vytvořil jsem tuto sekci, v níž naleznete více než polovinu těch zajímavějších či relevantnějších zápočtových esejí, které jsem během studií napsal. Anglistika si na esejích zakládá, studenti jich vyprodukují celé tucty a je potom škoda, když si je po kontrole vedoucími nikdy nikdo nepřečte. Když mi tedy fakulta dala svolení k jejich publikaci, řekl jsem si, že by některé z nich třeba někoho mohly zajímat.

Nadpisy těchto esejí jsou proklikávací a hodí vás na samostatné stránky s jejich kompletními texty. Pokud byste si však nebyli u některého z nadpisů jistí, co můžete očekávat, vyňal jsem z textů základní teze a vložil je dospodu. Eseje jsou psané anglicky (texty jsem kromě odkazů na zdroje nijak neupravoval, takže obzvláště v těch starších jistě budou chyby a/nebo stylistické neobratnosti), ale některé z těch filmových bych v budoucnu nějakým způsobem rád zpracoval v klasických českých článcích. Tak snad vás některé zaujmou 🙂

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AMERICAN LITERATURE

American Dream in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

This essay is to do precisely that – use the concept of the American dream and analyze its employment in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, a “play about a believer in the American dream who struggles with the knowledge of his failure” (Bigsby, 100).

Aspects of the Pygmalion Myth Transformed in The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute

This essay discusses the ways Neil LaBute transformed and updated G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion in his play called the shape of things.

Religion in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine

This essay is to deal with this sort of clash between Christianity and the Chippewa religion in Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine.

The Mother in Portnoy’s Complaint

This essay is to discuss the roots of the stereotype of the Jewish mother, to analyze its representation and operation in Portnoy’s Complaint, and finally to also raise the question of the possibility of reading the character of Sophie Portnoy in much more tragic light than the one in which she is probably read most of the time.

BRITISH LITERATURE

Disguise in The Merchant of Venice and Volpone

This essay deals with the various forms of disguise, be it seemingly simple cases of cross-dressing, plays of pretend, or even mere linguistic masks, in William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” and Ben Jonson’s “Volpone, or the Fox”.

Heroic Tradition in The Battle of Maldon

This essay is to concentrate precisely on the heroic material, on the poet’s use as well as function of set themes and images associated with heroic poetry and epic mentality.

Solutions to Riddle 28

[W]e have arrived at the stage where we have a plurality of solutions to this riddle, some better and genuinely more feasible than others, but most of them at least highly intriguing. This essay is to consider all of these proposed solutions and eventually choose one which seems the most probable.

The Importance of Language in George Orwell’s Novels

This essay will concentrate on the language of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, its impact on the readers’ perception of individual social classes and the book itself, and the issue of whether it would stand up to its scrutiny under the stylistic guidelines Orwell laid out in his essay “Politics and the English Language”. Additionally, Orwell’s literary development will be touched on, and the language of Nineteen Eighty-Four confronted with his other novels Burmese Days and Animal Farm.

FILMS

Charlie Chaplin’s Immigrant

This essay is to discuss the genesis and background of this movie, and analyze the motif of immigration in it.

Comparison of “The Frog Prince” and “Little Red Riding Hood” with Their Modern Cinematic Adaptations

This essay examines the main alternations the genre of fairy tales underwent in this century with a predominant focus on the two classic tales by Brothers Grimm – “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Frog Prince” – and their modern reworking on film.

Contemporary Canadian Cinema

This essay is to discuss precisely the reasons of the more or less poor status of Canadian cinema.

Contentious Themes and Censorship in Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey

In order to zoom in on the way the play and the film really handle all those contentious topics – mainly the topic of homosexuality –, this essay will take a closer look at how and why Delaney works with them in her dramatic piece, and then compare and contrast it with its movie adaptation.

Utopian Features in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village

What are the specific links that bind Shyamalan′s The Village and Thomas More′s Utopia, though, and if the film truly does present an example of a utopian community, what kind of utopia is it in particular? These are the questions to which we will attempt to find answers in this essay.

Who‘s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and American Film Censorship

This essay will discuss the operation of film censorship in Hollywood and its impact on adapting Albee’s play for the movie screen. It will scrutinize the changes and omissions to which the text of the play was – or was not – subjected, and consequently ponder over the question of whether the film was truly as groundbreaking as critics seem to suggest.

MISCELLANEOUS

Child Narrators

[I]t is my intention in this essay to discuss the features and effects of this technique, to lay down the theory of child narration, and consequently to apply my findings to my reading of William Golding’s short story „Billy the Kid“ and Frank O’Connor’s „My Oedipus Complex“. When discussing the features of the child narration in the first part of this paper I will be drawing examples from or simply alluding to a variety of sources including the two aforementioned books by Foer and Pessl, as well as George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Contrasting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X

This essay will discuss the similarities and contrasts between the two most prominent personalities of the American Civil Rights Movement – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X – as evidenced primarily in Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and his I Have a Dream speech, and Malcolm X’s Message to the Grass Roots and The Ballot or the Bullet.

Music in James Joyce’s Dubliners

This essay focuses on the functions of music in Joyce’s “Dubliners”, and discusses what possible conclusions may be drawn from it about the state of contemporary society.

North American Native Burial Customs

[T]his essay is to present the burial traditions of the North American Native tribes – to be more precise, the (from our perspective) elusive yet culturally immensely intriguing traditions of cave burial, tree burial, scaffold burial, and water burial.

Reasons Behind Slaves‘ Conversion to Christianity

Drawing factual details from the book of essays entitled Religion and American Culture and a variety of other sources, and later on using literary background taken from the writings of Frederick Douglass and Phillis Wheatley, this paper will map the religious situation in America at the time of the beginning of the slave trade, and its development throughout the subsequent decades of slavery.

Sexuality in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s

In this essay, we shall uncover those subtle hints of the homosexuality of a few main characters, and also focus on the views and attitude of Holly towards queer minority.