‘You Seemed the Goddess Incarnate’: Echoes of Greek Mythology in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood

• Thesis title in Czech: Jako bohyně ztělesněná: ozvěny řecké mytologie v díle Nightwood Djuny Barnes
• Thesis title in English: ‘You Seemed the Goddess Incarnate’: Echoes of Greek Mythology in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood
• Key words: Djuna Barnes|Nightwood|řecká mytologie|modernismus
• English key words: Djuna Barnes|Nightwood|Greek mythology|modernism
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2019/2020
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. Miroslava Horová, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 04.08.2020
• Date of assignment: 04.08.2020
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 07.09.2020
• Date and time of defence: 08.02.2022 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 17.01.2022
• Date of proceeded defence: 08.02.2022
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.

Guidelines

Modernism is marked by a series of radical creative departures, including the exploration of female desire and sexuality, e.g. in the work of Edna St Vincent Millay. The use of myth in general and Greek mythology in particular was key in the work of James Joyce and his magnum opus Ulysses but also for T. S. Eliot who, as an editor, was a prominent figure involved in the publishing of the novella that combines these two complex themes of sexuality and myth – Nightwood (1936) by Djuna Barnes.
The presence of Greek mythology in Nightwood has not received a great deal of critical attention. Situating Barnes’s work in the context of the modernist use of myth and relevant definitions of myth in general, this thesis will discuss the innate relation between sexuality, desire and Greek mythology and how, when combined, they contribute to the sub-narrative concept in Nightwood. The thesis will read mythical entities and their characteristics (e.g. Hecate, Demeter, Persephone, Tiresias, Agdistis, Artemis) and the bestial symbolism of various creatures (e.g. the phoenix, Cerberus and chimera) in juxtaposition with the protagonists of Nightwood, focusing on Robin Vote, Nora Flood and Dr Matthew O’Connor in particular, highlighting the aspects of gender fluidity and queer love and desire that are the driving force of this novella. In addition, the thesis will discuss a number of minor myth-related aspects of Nightwood, such as the symbolic role of Paris, and the performance of exile and metamorphosis.

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