2014 - Toulky napříč makrosvěty: poetika seriálové fikce (Walks across macroworlds: poetics of serial fiction)

In my dissertation, I have presented an original model of the poetics of serial fiction, which represents a noetic position of a kind in my conception. The poetics of serial fiction finds its expression as such a position in two ways. It focuses (a) on formal aspects of construction and shape of series, and (b) on the level of semantic spatial-temporal macrostructure labelled as the fictional world. This way, the poetics of serial fiction is able to satisfactorily capture even mutually considerably different compositional constructions of the works, as well as explain gradual creation of the work’s fictional world and the course of events within. In the introduction, I present three levels of my research. The first one is the pure level, which regards seriality as a theoretical problem. The second one is the descriptive level, which dynamically relates the first one to a collection of particular works, which correspond to the seriality mode. The third one is the analytical level referring directly to particular works, while taking into consideration their creation at a particular time, on a particular place, and within a particular context. Individual levels of research were viewed through two epistemic perspectives of the poetics of serial fiction, which are fictization (chapter two) and the fictional macro-world (chapter three). Chapters two and three have an identical structure. The initial parts of chapters two and three introduce the rather static tools, which have placed five types of seriality into a system of relations between the descriptive and pure levels: means of information mediation (fictization) and qualities of fictional entities (fictional macro-world). In the latter part of the chapters, I present the rather dynamic tools that reveal further relations between the descriptive and analytical levels when applied to the five types of seriality: a questioning model (fictization) and micro-worlds, sub-worlds, and narrative currents (fictional macro-world). Explanatory possibilities of the poetics of serial fiction and its tools in the case of the analytical level are demonstrated in chapter four, which analyses the series 24 Hours. Seriality is defined through the relationship between the state of affairs in the macro-world at the end of a current episode and the state of affairs in the macro-world at the end of the previous one. Five types of seriality are derived, depending on the level of mutual connection and relationships among psycho-physical fictional entities in the macro-world at the end of a current episode and the end of the previous one. The dissertation then proves (a) a gradual decrease of episodic worlds autonomy and (b) a gradual increase of the fictional macro-world importance as a referential frame for fictional entities’ relational qualities. Through the point of view of its five types, seriality is thus revealed as an internally ordered phenomenon. Although the dissertation predominantly focuses on seriality as a theoretical construct, it concurrently regulates this construct with qualities of individual works and vice versa. For this reason, I wish to believe that despite it is a theoretical construct, it can by analogy speak of real qualities of serial fiction when this is seen as a specific category of works of art. This does not need to merely concern television serial fiction, because a lot of the presented findings about seriality are valid for serial fiction regardless the medium – film, radio, graphic novels and literary fiction. Questions connected with such extension of the validity of conclusions are however beyond the limits of research, which this dissertation specifies.