Across that Sea: Cultural and Personal Identity in Wide Sargasso Sea

• Název práce v češtině: Za tím mořem: kulturní a osobní identita v románu Širé sargasové moře
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Across that Sea: Cultural and Personal Identity in Wide Sargasso Sea
• Klíčová slova: kultura|identita|obeah|liminalita|kolonialismus|kreolština|Jamaika
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Creole|Culture|Identity|Jamaica|Obeah|Liminality|Colonialism
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2023/2024
• Typ práce: bakalářská práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: Mgr. Miroslava Horová, Ph.D.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 20.03.2024
• Datum zadání: 20.03.2024
• Schválení administrátorem: bylo schváleno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 21.03.2024
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: ne

Zásady pro vypracování

Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea portrays the experience of growing up as a white creole woman in the Caribbean, focusing on the feelings of liminality and estrangement stemming from the protagonist’s unique social and cultural position. The thesis will concentrate firstly on the various strategies used to portray this liminality as well as on the ways it is perceived and reacted to by the protagonist herself as well as the people around her. Furthermore, it will discuss the historical background of the novel focusing on the ways in which colonialism manipulates cultural identity of the colonial subjects, using it as a means of control. The first section will analyse the protagonist’s gradual realisation concerning the implication of the liminal nature of her cultural identity, as she encounters hostility and rejection expressed by the various communities in her vicinity. Her isolation and lack of agency is taken advantage of as she is being spoken for and misrepresented. The inability to express herself and more importantly to be in touch with her (not only cultural) identity ushers the protagonist into madness. Her insanity is a direct consequence of the silencing by the colonialist rule metaphorically represented by the protagonist’s husband. The plot-centric portion will be paralleled by the above-mentioned analysis of the socio-historic context which will discuss the relation between colonialism and cultural identity as it is exemplified in the novel. Its focus will be on the cultural practice of “obeah”, the complex meaning(s) of the term and its politicised role in the colonial subjugation of the Caribbean islands.The aim of the thesis is to explore the ways in which cultural identity is used by colonial powers as a means of control and how this is depicted in Wide Sargasso Sea in both the plot and the framework of the novel.

Seznam odborné literatury

Adjarian, M. M. “Between and beyond Boundaries in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’.” Online. College literature 22, no. 1 (1995): 202-209.
Cappello, Silvia. “Postcolonial Discourse in ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’: Creole Discourse vs. European Discourse, Periphery vs. Center, and Marginalized People vs. White Supremacy.” Journal of Caribbean Literatures 6, no. 1 (2009): 47–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40986298.
Ciolkowski, Laura E. “Navigating the Wide Sargasso Sea: Colonial History, English Fiction, and British Empire.” Twentieth century literature 43, no. 3 (1997): 339-359. https://doi.org/10.2307/441916.
Fayad, Mona. “Unique Ghosts: The Struggle for Representation in Jean Rhys’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’.” Modern Fiction Studies 34, no. 3 (1988): 437–52.
Mcghee, J. Alexandra. “Fever dreams: obeah, tropical disease, and cultural contamination in colonial Jamaica and the metropole.” Atlantic studies 12, no. 2 (2015): 179-199. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2015.1025344.
Muste, Peter. “Authorial Obeah and Naming in Jean Rhys's ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’.” The Explicator 75, no. 2 (2017): 73–76.
Wilson, Sharon. “Bluebeard’s Forbidden Room in Rhys’s Post-Colonial MetaFairy Tale, ‘Wide Sargasso Sea.’” Journal of Caribbean Literatures 3, no. 3 (2003): 111–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40986148.