The Hero's Journey in Japanese Folk Tales and Czech Fairy Tales

The bachelor thesis focuses on the hero archetype and the hero's journey in Japanese folktales and Czech fairy tales. The aim is to use a method of comparative literature to verify the theory of sameness of the hero archetype. This is achieved through the comparison of hero characters from selected folktales and fairy tales, according to the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces written by mythologist Joseph Campbell. A special emphasis is placed on the analysis of the hero's journey and its characteristic. The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter presents terminology and development of the genre, in the second and the third one I deal with analysis of male heroes and female heroines. The last chapter explores the hero archetype in folktales and fairy tales with typical elements and character types of the given countries