Death as an artifact: aesthetisation of death in works of Georges Rodenbach and Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic

The aim of the submitted thesis is a comparison of symbolism of a double in Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-Morte and Romány tří mágů of Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic. We will focus maily on death as a key motif of literature at the fin de siècle and a motif that is, in works we are examining, closely linked with the existence of a double. We will inspect motif of a double in the context of psychological states of mind. The choice of compared texts was motivated by the process of self disintegration. The process of self disintegration is closely connected with the process of depersonalisation which appears when a subject makes contact with a soulful space or a object. Cities (Bruges, Venice, Prague) which are the scene of this self disintegration take a special place in the literature of symbolism as a urban space of art and death at once. Despite mutual relation of life and art, the strange tension, and the phenomenon of annihilation, is still present within this relation