Kafka and His Contexts

The multinational and multilingual fin de siècle Prague has often been credited for generating a distinct strain of Modernism. In this course, we will have the advantage of exploring the texts of Franz Kafka in the place where he spent most of his life, in Prague, the ‘little mother” who held him in her “claws.” We will also read Kafka’s modernist contemporaries such as Hoffmansthal, Adolf Loos and Jaroslav Hašek as well as later writers such as Havel, Weil, and Blatný. A selection of primary texts and critical essays will help us gain insights into cultural, aesthetic and historical “contexts” of Kafka’s prose. The topics will include: family and solitude, provincialism and worldliness, travel and museums, languages, Judaism. While expanding our understanding of Modernism, we will also attempt to read Kafka “out of contexts,” in order to maintain a fresh look at his prose through close readings. The goal of the course is to encourage students to develop their own understanding of Kafka and engage further with the literature and arts of Kafka’s Prague. (A commented walk through Kafka’s Prague, including a viewing of Kafka’s library and his grave, will be a part of the course.)