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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Milan Kundera – Criticism and interpretation'
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1
Lemmens, Kateri. "La philosophie à l'épreuve du roman chez Milan Kundera." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1999. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD_0028/MQ50537.pdf.
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Bennett, Richard. "Variations : influence intertextuality, and Milan Kundera, Jean Rhys, and Tom Stoppard." Thesis, McGill University, 1994. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26254.
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This thesis is in three chapters. Chapter one is about Harold Bloom's theory of the Anxiety of Influence. Bloom's argument is that literary history is shaped by the anxiety of "strong" poets at their belatedness. I show that he depends upon a subjective interpretation of literary production in order to defend a rigidly traditional canon.Chapter two deals with theories of intertextuality, principally those of Julia Kristeva and Michael Riffaterre. As alternatives to theories of influence, neither proves satisfactory. Both founder on the contradictory goal to explain all literature, at the expense of recognizing literary diversity.
Chapter three concerns literary variations. These are texts which are deliberately premised on pre-existing texts. I focus on three examples from this class of literary texts which is not satisfactorily dealt with by any of the theories I consider. I pursue a less wide-ranging approach in order to unearth important features of literary variations.
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Livernois, Jonathan. "La présence du sacré dans l'oeuvre de Milan Kundera /." Thesis, McGill University, 2006. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=99379.
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For several critics, Milan Kundera's novels illustrate the disenchantment of the world and the demystification of all myths. In this thesis, we accept this point of view while insisting on the persistence of sacred elements in the works of Kundera. We formulate the hypothesis of the "inoculation" of a sacred part (i.e. myths, scenes and figures of the Holy Bible, etc.) in the prose of the novel---"le caractere concret, quotidien, corporel de la vie", as Kundera wrote---in order to anchor this often unstable matter and alleviate the brevity of the character's life. Our analysis of three novels (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Farewell Party and The Joke) reveals an oscillation between the sacred and the prose within the works of Milan Kundera. This movement is illustrated, in the text, by the motif of the baroque angel.
4
Campeau-Devlin, Marianne. "Le motif du mirror dans l'œuvre de Milan Kundera /." Thesis, McGill University, 2007. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=112328.
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For Milan Kundera, the question of identity is one of the essential questions around which a novel is constructed. The novelist attempts to define the issue by exploring the existential themes that are tied to it. These themes are examined from different angles with the aid of what the author calls "motifs". Our study is centered on one of those motifs, that of the mirror, through which the author explores the "enigma of the ego". The typological analysis of this motif in Kundera's ten novels brings out in the characters two fundamental attitudes with regard to their identity. The first consists in clinging to it, which results in the character's disquiet, while the second consists in freeing oneself from it, which leads to a better understanding of reality as well as to a certain form of wisdom.
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Duchesne, Hugo. "Petites proses géométriques, suivi de, La poésie au secours du roman." Thesis, McGill University, 2002. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=29500.
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The reason why I have studied the way Milan Kundera appeals to poetry inside his novels is that I did the opposite in my creative text by subjecting a poetic form to certain novelistic constraints such as narration, the presence of characters and the use of prose. Out of these constraints, the poetic obsession about images and shapes leads to a story.These four "Short geometrical proses" appear as "short stories" all of which tell a moment, a situation or the life of characters obsessed with geometrical figures such as the rectangle, the triangle, the square and the circle. This "nature of geometrical figures" brings forth sweet reveries which translate various feelings in a playful tone.
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Parent, Thierry. "Quatre vies sur un chemin, et, Le hasard a l'oeuvre chez Milan Kundera." Thesis, McGill University, 2001. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=32935.
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The creation part of this thesis will take the form of four short stories. The first one is the story of Jonas. The day of his solemn vows, Jonas leaves the monastery after having seen a woman who has awaken in him a desire of freedom absent until then. The second tells the story of Denise, a waitress in a restaurant stuck in a feeling of deep solitude. She regains contact with the world through a cat that awakes in her the desire to share her life. The third story will be of Maryse, the woman whom Jonas saw. Maryse is a country girl who had left her small town to live with her fiance in the city. She leaves him to regain the purity and calm of her small country town. The last story is the story of Jean, Maryse's fiance. After she leaves, he goes looking for his missing cat, witch will lead him to Denise.The notion of chance is omnipresent in the works of Milan Kundera. Concentrating mainly on three novels, La Valse aux adieux, L'Insoutenable Legerete de l'etre and L'Immortalite---where the author proposes a "Theory of chance"---this study focuses on the foundations and consequences of chance in the fictitious world of Kundera. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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Bessebs, Véronique. "Un train en cache un autre, suivi de, Rêves et récit onirique chez Milan Kundera /." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=33272.
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Various characters tell the story of their participation in a series of events that take place in and around a casino, in a strange, almost magical atmosphere. The narration deals with the theme of illusion, as well as that of the danger and beauty of dreams and reality merging.The second part of this master's thesis is a critical paper that focuses on the way in which dreams and oeniric writing unfold in the works of Milan Kundera. The method entails understanding and defining dream writing through a typology that categorizes the different types found according to their function. The varying degrees culminate when dreams and reality merge: how does the line that distinguishes the two become blurred? Can it be defined or delimited, and above all, on which thematic ground?
8
Rey, Catherine. "La nouvelle Babel : langage, identite et morale dans les oevres de Emil Cioran, Milan Kundera et Andrei Makine." University of Western Australia. School of Humanities, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2006.0051.
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The subject of this thesis is an examination of the acquisition in language of a new country for three Eastern European writers exiled in France. For such writers, art and life become inseparable: just as the experience of geographical displacement liberates the writer so it liberates his language. This new language becomes a field of experimentation, in which the conflicts that precipitated exile are resolved. Departure necessitates the abandonment of the mother tongue: for Cioran, Romanian; for Kundera, Czech; for Makine, Russian. For each of these three writers, studied in this thesis, the adoption of French as the language of literary expression was a decisive act. Geographically and spiritually he and his text are redefined. Separated from familiar landmarks, each finds a new terrain in the language of the creative text, a place, a private space, in which to express the realities of his new self. On the one hand this new paradigm is the expression of a rejection of a past and a tradition; on the other hand it is essential in the process of coming to self-understanding. For Cioran, Kundera and Makine the French language provides a foil to their own ruptured, fragmented, traumatised or guilt-ridden native identities. In each case the adoption of French with its concomitant stereotypical qualities and values constitutes a dialectical process of coming to a clearer sense of self.
9
McCauley, Christopher Michael. "Language, Memory, and Exile in the Writing of Milan Kundera." PDXScholar, 2016. http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3047.
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During the twentieth century, the former Czechoslovakia was at the forefront of Communist takeover and control. Soviet influence regulated all aspects of life in the country. As a result, many well-known political figures, writers, and artists were forced to flee the country in order to evade imprisonment or death. One of the more notable examples is the writer Milan Kundera, who fled to France in 1975. Once in France, the notion of exile became a prominent theme in his writing as he sought to expose the political situation of his country to the western world--one of the main reasons why he chose to publish his work in French rather than in Czech. This thesis analyzes the themes of language and memory in connection with exile in two of Kundera's novels, Le livre du rire et de l'oubli (1978) and L'Ignorance (2000). We contend that these concepts serve as anchors and tethers, stabilizing forces meant to help exiled characters recreate their identity outside of their homeland. By exploring notions of language and memory in these novels, Kundera demonstrates how the experience of exile affects the human condition during the latter half of the twentieth century.
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Tanaka, Shuko. "Le rire et la mélancolie dans les romans de Milan Kundera." Thesis, Strasbourg, 2013. http://www.theses.fr/2013STRAC008/document.
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Le rire et la mélancolie constituent l'ambiance dominante des romans de Milan Kundera. Ce sont les deux faces de son attitude vis-à-vis du narcissisme de l'homme reflété par ses personnages. Comme Narcisse, l'homme n'est jamais celui pour qui il se prend. Le narrateur présente cette vision kundérienne de l'homme, en racontant le comique et la misère des personnages. Comme le vécu de Kundera se reflète dans les situations des personnages, ce narrateur assume d'un côté une fonction d'autocritique. Mais d'un autre côté, ce narrateur reflète également le romancier, en prenant jusqu'au nom même de Kundera, et présente son image du romancier que croit être Kundera. Ainsi, Kundera lui-même n'est pas non plus hors de l'emprise narcissique. Néanmoins, le roman est le seul espace qui lui permet de méditer sa subjectivité narcissique en la relativisant. Pour Kundera, le roman permet d'échapper momentanément à la condition de Narcisse, grâce au jeu solitaire et sérieux de l'écriture dans les marges de l'hypothèseLaughter and melancholy constitute the dominant atmosphere of the novels of Milan Kundera. These are the two faces of his attitude about man’s narcissism and of which his characters are reflections. But man is never the person he thinks he is. Kundera expresses this vision of man through the narrators in his novels, who explore the comic and the miserable aspects of the characters appearing in them. Given the fact that the experience of Kundera is reflected in the characters’ situations, on one hand, the narrator endorses a function of self-criticism. On the other hand, this narrator reflects the novelist, sometimes taking even the name of Kundera himself, and presents his image of the novelist which Kundera believes himself to be. Therefore, Kundera is not free of narcissism. Nevertheless, the novel is the only place that allows him to ponder over his narcissistic subjectivity by the way of relativization. For Kundera, the novel enables him to escape momentarily the condition of Narcissus, by the solitary and serious game of writing in the margins of hypothesis
11
Corry, Maya. "Masculinity and spirituality in Renaissance Milan : the role of the beautiful body in the art of Leonardo da Vinci and Leonardeschi." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669816.
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Crous, Elsa. "L’enjeu du jeu dans Risibles amours de Milan Kundera." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10210/8301.
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M.A. (French)Milan Kundera is known for being almost obsessive in guarding his privacy, and in the manner in which he controls any translations of his writings. Despite such strictures, the works of this former exile from Czechoslovakia, who now resides in France and writes in French, have been translated and disseminated to a worldwide audience of readers. It is not only his fictional writings which have earned him kudos, but also his ventures into non-fiction, viz. literary criticism. Having April 1st as a birth date was to have a dramatic impact on Kundera, who later declared that this significant date, which is frequently associated with humorous pranks, pushed him to assume the role of philosophical fool in his writings. It is the different manifestations of games which come under scrutiny in this study, as represented in the seven short stories which make up the anthology Laughable Loves (Risibles Amours). Following an investigation of the differences between ancient and modern perception of what qualifies as ‘play’ or ‘games’, the games theories of reputed authors such as Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois and Stuart Brown are used to form the theoretical basis of this part of the study. The research is further augmented by Eric Berne’s theory on the psychology underlying the games people play, as it manifests in interpersonal relationships. However, no study of games would be complete without investigating the dark side of play, when the game is corrupted through the actions of the players, referees or spectators, or when what starts as a battle of wills spirals into what could best be described as war games. In the pages of this anthology the reader is introduced to various characters who dare to think they can manipulate other people or events, but end up being played by those very people, or by circumstances beyond their control.
13
Powell, Elisabeth, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, and School of Humanities and Languages. "A literature of modern suffering : suffering in the work of Feodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus and Milan Kundera." 2007. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/15716.
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This thesis examines the treatment of the theme of suffering by three modern authors: Feodor Dostoevsky, Albert Camus, and Milan Kundera. The analysis proceeds through the identification and examination of three primary concepts which I will argue are at the heart of their work, and which provide the conceptual foundations for their depictions of suffering: the wretched, the absurd, and the banal. These concepts will be used as an avenue through which to explore and articulate their treatment of suffering. It will be argued further that the work of these three authors forms a conceptual series, in that each contributes in an important way to the evolution of a modern secular way of thinking about suffering by producing portraits of suffering informed by concepts appropriate to specific moments in the modern era. The sense of wretchedness which emerges from Dostoevsky’s work is inextricably linked with the late nineteenth-century crisis-of-faith. The concept of the absurd ties Camus to the early-twentieth-century existentialist tradition, while the sense of banality in Kundera’s novels locates him in an era which has witnessed both the horrors of World War Two and the decline in the humanist tradition. The factor that unites them and gives order to their differences, however, is a common concern with questions of meaning. The loss of meaning in the modern era, and in particular the loss of meaning in relation to suffering, is a thread which develops progressively throughout the series. It is, as will be argued at the outset, what binds these three disparate authors together and what gives their work and their treatment of suffering a particular modern character.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
14
Kovácsová, Adéla. "České literární sny. (Interpretace tří Kunderových románů)." Master's thesis, 2014. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-338157.
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Diploma thesis Czech literary dreams deals with interpretation of three novels by Milan Kundera (The Joke, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laugter and Forgetting). The core of the interpretations lies with the dreamy parts of the novel. The meaning of the text was sought within relations of more and less noticeable subjects and intertextual references. The interpretations of chosen Kundera's novels are partially observed through the context of works of Ludvík Vaculík, in particular by the context of The Czech Dreambook.
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Kubová, Alena. "Analýza genderových vztahů a konceptu romantické lásky v románu Milana Kundery Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí." Master's thesis, 2016. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-353979.
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The diploma thesis discusses gender relationships, construction of romantic love, and questions of infidelity in the novel Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. These concepts are examined by means of feminist literary theories that deal with gender as an analytic category and that draw on resistant reading and reader response criticism as major theoretical and methodological points of analysis. The first analytical part focuses on the ways in which femininity and masculinity of the main characters are constructed within the context of patriarchal society under socialism. The second part of the analysis is devoted to various forms of love that appear among the characters. It investigates the role of these love schemes within the presented relationships and focuses on motives of infidelity while considering the gender identity of the characters. By employing gender analysis, this diploma thesis offers a new perspective that reflects on the reproduction of gender stereotypes and departs from existing interpretations of Kundera's major novel.
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Martinovská, Anna. ""Stávám se řečí." Smrt a návrat autora v perspektivě filosofie identity." Master's thesis, 2020. http://www.nusl.cz/ntk/nusl-436643.
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Diploma thesis "I become speech." Death and Return of the Author in the Perspective of Philosophy of Identity focuses on the question of inclusion of the author into the interpretation of literary text and aims to highlight the fruitfulness of such inclusion as well as some of its dangers. The thesis is divided into three parts. In the first part the author of the thesis presents a polemic account of some antiauthorial approaches, especially the "death of the author" as appearing in the texts of R. Barthes, M. Foucault and Jacques Derrida, along with a short mention of antiintentionalism of W. K Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley and a theory of the model author by U. Eco. The common feature of the aforementioned antiauthorial theories is a reductive idea of the author and his relation to text - the problematic aspects of authorial interpretation, which their texts wish to make evident, is then only a consequence of the problematic underlying notion of the author-subject. The second part of the thesis intends to present an alternative theoretical understanding of the "real author" using the philosophy of identity od J. Butler and P. Bourdieu. These authors are proposing a theory of a person who is not understood as a "real thing" that would be available for a complete delimitation, description and...