The uncompromising modernity of Kafka’s writing has fascinated generations of readers across the world. His fiction has added the word Kafkaesque to the English dictionary for the experience of an obscure and dislocating modernity. A vast body of criticism concerns the question of how to read a body of writing that upsets many of the reader’s conventional expectations about meaning-making. In this module we will analyse how Kafka employs realist, symbolist and allegorical frames of reference in order to challenge the very notion of stable meaning. You will study a selection of Kafka’s short stories with reference to the following themes: narrative perspective; authority, law and justice; gender roles; performance art and Kafka’s animals. The module is optional for students on all degrees and runs over one term.
Course Outline and Weekly Schedule
Week 1: Introduction: Auf der Galerie
Week 2: NO CLASS! Preparation for: Patriarchal Power and the Power of the Unconscious in Das Urteil [See 'Student Preparation']
Week 3: Patriarchal Power and the Power of the Unconscious in Das Urteil (continued)
Week 4: NO CLASS! Social Power and Collective Memory in Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer and “Eine kaiserliche Botschaft”
Week 5 a): Performance Art or Art as Sham? Ein Hungerkünstler
Week 5 b): Lecture, Wednesday 31 October, 2018, 5-7pm: When Anti-World Literature Turns into World Literature: Kafka’s Archives of Resistance
Week 6: READING WEEK
Week 7: Kafka's Animals: Kafka‘s Kleine Fabel in Comparison with Aesop’s Der Löwe und die Maus
Week 8: Kafka's Animals: The Ape and his Audience in Ein Bericht für eine Akademie
Week 9: Kafka's Animals: Narrative Perspective and Gender in Josefine, die Sängerin oder das Volk der Mäuse
Week 10 a): Make-up lesson for week 4, Monday 3rd December [room: TBA]: Social Power and Collective Memory in Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer and “Eine kaiserliche Botschaft”
Week 10 b) Course Summary: “Vor dem Gesetz” and Franz Kafka's Engagement with Modernity