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The Human Life and Everydayness in Language/Literature

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2016

Abstract

The linguistic part of the monograph studies human life and various aspects of its conceptualization - it discusses the reflection of life "as such", life lived through human body and its physical, perceptual, and emotional experience, life in its both linear and cyclically repeated perspective, life in childhood and old age, life of human beings in relationship with other people, life in its both everyday and festive experience. The main studied langauges and cultures are Czech and Polish.

The book is dived into four parts dedicated to various aspectes of the research topic. The literary -theoretical part of the book consists of eight independent chapters.

Their authors concentrated on manifestations of everydayness in human life in selected Czech and Polish poetry, prosaic, aesthetic, philosophical texts or films. They analyse these heterogeneous texts, belonging to different times and different genres, using theoretical and methodological repertoire that is broad, yet united by a common denominator: mapping of traces of seemingly banal, everyday situations and moments leading to a certain generalisation that allows for the articulation of generally shared human experience.

The thematically varied chapters are unified by a constant oscillation between description and characterization of heterogeneous manifestations of everyday human life that always becomes a starting point for the quest for and formulation of principles of generally shared human experience expressed by the language of poetry, a prosaic text, a philosophical reflection or the medium of a film documentary. In a simplified version, this thematic oscillation can be seen on the axis expressed by terms everyday / ordinary - festive, partial - general, low - noble, profane - sacral, etc.