Содержание
INTRODUCTION 3
PART I. MILAN KUNDERA AND HIS BOOKS IN THE WORLD LITERATURE 6
1.1. Milan Kundera as the Czech Republic's most recognized living writer 6
1.2. The place of "The Unbearable Lightness of being" and "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" in the world literature 11
1.3. The position of a writer from the Socialist world in the West 17
PART II. “THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING” 26
2.1. Themes, symbols and motifs of the novel 26
2.2. Concept of eternal recurrence in "The Unbearable Lightness of being", the dichotomy between lightness and weight 38
2.3. A genre-defying mix of the novel, its structure peculiarities 49
2.3. The political relations between Czech and Russia and their interpretation in the book 55
PART III. “THE BOOK OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING” AND PECULIARITIES OF THE NOVELS 62
3.1. The Stalinist totalitarianism in ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’ 62
3.2. The main characters’ ‘angels and demons’ 71
3.3. The terrors and humiliations of the intellectual under totalitarianism 76
3.4. The general political, cultural and psychological peculiarities of the novels 84
CONCLUSION 91
LIST OF LITERATURE 94
Выдержка из текста
Kundera has written in both Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; these therefore are not considered translations but original works.
Due to censorship by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia, his books were banned from his native country, and that remained the case until the downfall of this government in the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
The books under the study namely “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” are written by Milan Kundera and concern political, social and psychological sides of human life and the events of Czechoslovakia crisis. The art of this Czech writer nowadays is very popular and relevant, because of describing the truth of the relations between Czechoslovakia and Russia and facing the greatest existential problems that people are faced with: love, death, transcendence, the sense of continuity or "heaviness" that is provided by memory, and the contrasting sense of "lightness" that is brought about by forgetting.
The object of a work is Milan Kundera’s creative work.
The subject of a work is a reflection of Czechoslovakia crisis in the books “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting”.
The aim of a current work is to study political, sociological and psychological peculiarities of the novels.
The objectives of a work are the following:
1. To present Milan Kundera as the Czech most recognized living writer.
2. To pick out the place of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” and “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting” in the world literature.
3. To ascertain the position of an author from a Socialist world in the West.
4. To denote themes, motifs and symbols of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.
5. To describe concept of eternal recurrence in "The Unbearable Lightness of being", the dichotomy between lightness and weight.
6. To determine a genre-defying mix of the novel, its structure peculiarities of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.
7. To define the political relations between Czech and Russia and their interpretation in the book “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”.
8. To uncover the Stalinist totalitarianism in ‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting’.
9. To expose the main characters’ ‘angels and demons’.
10. To represent the terrors and humiliations of the intellectual under totalitarianism.
11. To lead on the general political, cultural and psychological peculiarities of the novels.
12. To make conclusions.
Список использованной литературы
LIST OF LITERATURE
1. Bakhtin M.M. The Dialogic Imagination trans. Caryl Merson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas, 1981).
2. Banerjee Maria N. Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera. New York: Grove Weidenfield, 1993. 192-251. Print.
3. Banerjee, Maria Nemcova, Terminal Paradox: The Novels of Milan Kundera (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990).
4. Banville J. “Light but Sound,” Review on The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books /2004 / may /01/fiction.johnbanville
5. Barnard John, “The Unbearable Lighntess of Being: Repetition, Formal Structure, and Critique,” Kunapipi XXV:1. The Art of the Novel. New York: Grove Press, 1988. Print.
6. Barnard, John. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Repetition, Formal Structure, and Critique.” Kunapipi 25.1 (2003): 65-73. Print.
7. Bayley John, “Fictive Lightness, Fictive Weight,” Salmagundi 73 (Winter 1987): 84-92.
8. Bayley John, “Kundera and Jane Austen,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 58-64.
9. Bedient Calvin, “On Milan Kundera,” Salmagundi 73 (Winter 1987): 93-108.
10. Brand Glen, Milan Kundera: An Annotated Bibliography (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1988).
11. Caldwell Ann Stewart, “The Intrusive Narrative Voice of Milan Kundera,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 46-52.
12. Calvino I. “On kundera,” Bloom’s Modern Critical Views on Milan Kundera, Ed., Harold Bloom, Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2013.
13. Calvino Italo, “On Kundera,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 53-57.
14. Chvatik Kvetoslav, “Milan Kundera and the Crisis of Language,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 27-36.
15. Degenaar Johan, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Philosophical Exploration,” Literator 13, no. 3 (1992): 51-63.
16. DiFranco, Ani. Marrow on revelling. Righteous Babe Records, 2001.
17. Doctorow E.L. “Four Characters Under Two Tyrannies: The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” Critical Essays on Milan Kundera, Ed., Peter Petro. New York: G.K. Hall & Co, 2008.
18. Fraser Ian. Identity, Politics and the Novel: The Aesthetic Moment. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013. Print.
19. Galia Golan. Reform Rule in Czechoslovakia: The Dubcek Era 1968-1969(Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 82.
20. Henson C. “Beethoven, Music, and Polychronic Narrative in Milan Kundera‟s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.”: http://www.english.uwosh.edu/henson/ulbconf1.html
21. Hunt Lynn et al. The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures (Bedford’s/ St. Martin’s, 2001), p. 1137-1139.
22. Jacoby, Russell. Social Amnesia: A Critique of Contemporary Psychology. New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A.: Transaction, 1996. Print.
23. Kundera M. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim, London: Faber and Faber, 1984.
24. Kundera Milan, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York: Alfred A Knopf, Inc., 1980).
25. Kundera Milan. The Art of the Novel. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. Print.
26. Kundera, M. The Art of the Novel, translated from the French by Linda Asher. New York: Grove Press, 1986.
27. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. Print.
28. Kundera, Milan. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1980. Print.
29. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. 1st ed, New York: Harper & Row, 1984. (Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim)
30. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. trans. Michael Henry Helm. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1995. Print.
Italo, Calvino. “Lightness.”Six Memos for the Next Millennium. trans. Patrick Creagh. New York: Vintage International VINTAGE BOOKS A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSE, INC, 1988. Print.
31. Lukacher Ned. Time-fetishes: The Secret History of Eternal Recurrence. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. 115-38.Print.
32. Masoomi M. The Convergence of the Theory and the Text: An Eclectic Approach to Exploring the Motif of Globality in Mishra and Kundera’s Selected Works.Unpublished PhD Thesis. India: University of Pune, 2010.
33. Michiko Kakutani's review, NY Times, April 2, 1984.
34. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Kniha smíchu a zapomnění) translated from the Czech by Aaron Asher. New York: Harper Perennial, 1996.
35. Milton, Angela C., “Irreconcilable Oppositions: "Es Muss Sein" and The Unbearable Lightness of Being” (2013). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. Paper 40. PDF File.
36. Misurella F. Understanding Milan Kundera: Public Events, Private Affairs. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010.
37. Misurella Fred, “Central European Style,” Salmagundi 73 (Winter 1987): 33-57.
38. Misurella Fred, Understanding Milan Kundera (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993).
39. Molesworth Charles, “Kundera and the Book,” Salmagundi 73 (Winter 1987): 65-83.
40. Morstein Petra von, “Eternal Return and the Unbearable Lightness of Being,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 65-78.
41. Nietzsche, Friedrich, “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-moral Sense” in The Nineteenth Century Novel, ed. Stephan Regan (London: Routledge, 1989), 49-54.
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43. O’Brien, John, Milan Kundera & Feminism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).
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45. Pichova Hana, “The Narrator in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” The Slavic and East European Journal 36, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 217-226.
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49. Ricard Francois, “Satan’s Point of View,” Salmagundi 73 (Winter 1987): 58-64.
50. Ricard Francois, “The Fallen Idyll: A Rereading of Milan Kundera,” The Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 17-26.
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