Lambent Traces

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Lambent Traces

Author : Stanley Corngold
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400826136
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Lambent Traces by : Stanley Corngold

Download or read book Lambent Traces written by Stanley Corngold and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of September 22, 1912, Franz Kafka wrote his story "The Judgment," which came out of him "like a regular birth." This act of creation struck him as an unmistakable sign of his literary destiny. Thereafter, the search of many of his characters for the Law, for a home, for artistic fulfillment can be understood as a figure for Kafka's own search to reproduce the ecstasy of a single night. In Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka, the preeminent American critic and translator of Franz Kafka traces the implications of Kafka's literary breakthrough. Kafka's first concern was not his responsibility to his culture but to his fate as literature, which he pursued by exploring "the limits of the human." At the same time, he kept his transcendental longings sober by noting--with incomparable irony--their virtual impossibility. At times Kafka's passion for personal transcendence as a writer entered into a torturous and witty conflict with his desire for another sort of transcendence, one driven by a modern Gnosticism. This struggle prompted him continually to scrutinize different kinds of mediation, such as confessional writing, the dream, the media, the idea of marriage, skepticism, asceticism, and the imitation of death. Lambent Traces: Franz Kafka concludes with a reconstruction and critique of the approaches to Kafka by such major critics as Adorno, Gilman, and Deleuze and Guattari..

Kafka

Author : Howard Caygill
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1472595432
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (725 download)

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Book Synopsis Kafka by : Howard Caygill

Download or read book Kafka written by Howard Caygill and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By challenging many of the assumptions, misguided presuppositions and even legends that have surrounded the legacy and reception of Franz Kafka's work during the 20th century, Howard Caygill provides us with a radical new way of reading Kafka. Kafka: In the Light of the Accident advances a unique philosophical interpretation via the pivotal theme of the accident, understood both philosophically and in a broader cultural context, that includes the philosophical and sociological basis of accident insurance and the understanding of the concepts of chance and necessity. Caygill reveals how Kafka's reception was governed by a series of accidents - from the order of Max Brod's posthumous publication of the novels and the correction of 'misprints', to many other posthumous editorial strategies. The focus on the accident casts light on the role of media in Kafka's work, particularly visual media and above all photography. By stressing the role of contingency in his authorship, Caygill also fundamentally questions the 20th century view of Kafka's work as 'kafkaesque'. Instead of a narration of domination, Kafka: In the Light of the Accident argues that Kafka's work is best read as a narration of defiance, one which affirms (often comically) the role of error and contingency in historical struggle. Kafka's defiance is situated within early 20th century radical culture, with particular emphasis lent to the roles of radical Judaism, the European socialist and feminist movements, and the subaltern histories of the United States and China.

Kafka's Architectures

Author : Ayad B. Rahmani
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786476532
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

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Book Synopsis Kafka's Architectures by : Ayad B. Rahmani

Download or read book Kafka's Architectures written by Ayad B. Rahmani and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-01-02 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adopting Kafka as a lens to examine modern concepts in architecture, this book pries open new interpretations in Kafka scholarship. Each of eight chapters takes up an architectural element with which to explore meanings central to both literature and architecture. Stairs function as vertical access but in Kafka's hands become an instrument of science, testing the merit of natural selection. Kafka's doors open and close less to allow passage than to reconcile one psychological interior with the next. Notions of plumbing and hygiene begin to acquire new meaning. The architecture of Mies van der Rohe begins to make more sense, especially his tabula rasa approach to design, signifying less a harsh disdain for site and more a response to a reality in which the ceremony of the stairs had died and was replaced by the pervasive flatness of the modern floor.

Freedom from the Free Will

Author : Dimitris Vardoulakis
Publisher : SUNY Press
ISBN 13 : 1438462395
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Freedom from the Free Will by : Dimitris Vardoulakis

Download or read book Freedom from the Free Will written by Dimitris Vardoulakis and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings Kafkas fiction into conversation with philosophy and political theory. Many of Kafkas narratives place their heroes in situations of confinement. Gregor Samsa is locked in his room in the Metamorphosis, and the land surveyor in The Castle is stuck in the village unable either to leave or to gain access to the castle. Dimitris Vardoulakis argues that Kafka constructs these plots of confinement in order to laugh at his heroes futile attempts to express their will. In this way, Kafka emerges as a critic of the free will and as a proponent of a different kind of freedom: one focused within the confines of ones experience and mediated by ones circumstances. Vardoulakis contends that his sense of humor is the key to understanding Kafka as a political thinker. Laughter, in this account, is the tool used to deconstruct power. By placing Kafka in dialogue with philosophy and political theory, Vardoulakis shows that Kafka can give us invaluable insights into how to be freeand how to laugh. Vardoulakiss original new book contributes to the fields of Kafka studies, political theory, and contemporary European philosophy by forcefully realigning our understanding of the problem of freedom and the free will as it traverses Kafkas literary texts. Its greatest strength lies in its careful and rigorous exposition of the refractory concepts of freedom that circulate through Kafkas most canonical works. Gerhard Richter, author of Inheriting Walter Benjamin Freedom from the Free Will is at the forefront of a vibrant new development in Kafka studies that, without succumbing to old debates about Kafkas supposed religiosity, rigorously works out the philosophical undercurrents and theoretical consequences of his literary practices. The laughing, playful Kafka encountered in Vardoulakiss book creates concepts of freedom that cannot be found elsewhere. Peter Fenves, author of The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time

Towards a New Philosophy of Mental Health

Author : Drozdstoy St. Stoyanov
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443884510
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (438 download)

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Book Synopsis Towards a New Philosophy of Mental Health by : Drozdstoy St. Stoyanov

Download or read book Towards a New Philosophy of Mental Health written by Drozdstoy St. Stoyanov and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume represents the results of the Sixteenth International Conference for Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, entitled “Neuroscience, Logic and Mental Development”. This edited collection brings together selected plenary and keynote papers from the conference, and represents a major contribution to an interdisciplinary dialogue in mental health through the use of new philosophical tools, emerging from neuroscience, clinical psychology, phenomenology and epistemology. The papers gathered in this volume are divided into four parts, depending on their disciplinary paradigm. The papers included in Part I are focused on advances in neuroscience and neuroimaging as theoretical underpinnings for progress in psychiatric and psychological explanations. Special attention is paid here to the critical reappraisal of current approaches to the implementation of neuroscience in mental health. Some of these papers end with suggestions for modifications to contemporary research programs. The papers belonging to Part II contribute to the psychological understanding of mental disorders, particularly personality disorders. Parts III and IV trace the implications of phenomenology and epistemology for the improvement of an interdisciplinary pluralogue in psychiatry.

Imperial Fictions

Author : Todd Kontje
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 0472123734
Total Pages : 343 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (721 download)

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Book Synopsis Imperial Fictions by : Todd Kontje

Download or read book Imperial Fictions written by Todd Kontje and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-04-25 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imperial Fictions explores ways in which writers from late antiquity to the present have imagined communities before and beyond the nation-state. It takes as its point of departure challenges to the discrete nation-state posed by globalization, migration, and European integration today, but then circles back to the beginnings of European history after the fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike nationalist literary historians of the nineteenth century, who sought the tribal roots of an allegedly homogeneous people, this study finds a distant mirror of analogous processes today in the fluid mixtures and movements of peoples. Imperial Fictions argues that it is time to stop thinking about today’s multicultural present as a deviation from a culturally monolithic past. We should rather consider the various permutations of “German” identities that have been negotiated within local and imperial contexts from the early Middle Ages to the present.

The Great War and the Death of God

Author : Charles A. O'Connor
Publisher : New Acdemia+ORM
ISBN 13 : 1955835268
Total Pages : 385 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (558 download)

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Book Synopsis The Great War and the Death of God by : Charles A. O'Connor

Download or read book The Great War and the Death of God written by Charles A. O'Connor and published by New Acdemia+ORM. This book was released on 2014-04-07 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling analysis of how World War I spurred the rise of atheism and the subsequent effect on Western theology, philosophy, literature, and art. The catastrophic Great War left humanity in a world no longer trustworthy and reassuring but seemingly meaningless and indifferent. Instead of redressing humanity’s cosmic alienation, postwar Western culture abandoned its concern for cosmic meaning, lost its confidence in human reason, and enabled the scientific worldview of neo-Darwinian materialism to emerge and eventually dominate the Western mind. According to the proponents of that worldview, science is the only source of genuine truth, nature is the product of a blind evolutionary process, and reality at bottom is just physics and chemistry. Thus, God is dead and continued belief in a transcendently purposeful universe is intellectually indefensible and either disingenuous or delusional. By turning away from the eternal questions about the nature of reality, Western culture effectively ceded unwarranted credibility and prominence to neo-Darwinian materialism, including its recently strident New Atheism. “O’Connor revisits the 20th century’s journey from Nietzsche’s declaration of the ‘death of God’ to the rise of materialism as the dominant worldview of western intelligentsia. We live in a world that has largely expelled both mind and meaning from the citadels of serious intellectual pursuit, and O’Connor’s book is a fascinating and scholarly expedition into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of that troubling development.” —Carter Phipps, author of Evolutionaries “I found this topic to be top-rate. The book is well researched and conceived, nicely narrated and analyzed, and an original body of inquiry into a challenging, fascinating intellectual tradition.” —Ronald M. Johnson, Professor Emeritus of American History, Georgetown University

No Spiritual Investment in the World

Author : Willem Styfhals
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501731025
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis No Spiritual Investment in the World by : Willem Styfhals

Download or read book No Spiritual Investment in the World written by Willem Styfhals and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the twentieth century, German writers, philosophers, theologians, and historians turned to Gnosticism to make sense of the modern condition. While some saw this ancient Christian heresy as a way to rethink modernity, most German intellectuals questioned Gnosticism's return in a contemporary setting. In No Spiritual Investment in the World, Willem Styfhals explores the Gnostic worldview's enigmatic place in these discourses on modernity, presenting a comprehensive intellectual history of Gnosticism's role in postwar German thought. Establishing the German-Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes at the nexus of the debate, Styfhals traces how such figures as Hans Blumenberg, Hans Jonas, Eric Voegelin, Odo Marquard, and Gershom Scholem contended with Gnosticism and its tenets on evil and divine absence as metaphorical detours to address issues of cultural crisis, nihilism, and the legitimacy of the modern world. These concerns, he argues, centered on the difficulty of spiritual engagement in a world from which the divine has withdrawn. Reading Gnosticism against the backdrop of postwar German debates about secularization, political theology, and post-secularism, No Spiritual Investment in the World sheds new light on the historical contours of postwar German philosophy.

Kafka’s Stereoscopes

Author : Isak Winkel Holm
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1501347837
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Kafka’s Stereoscopes by : Isak Winkel Holm

Download or read book Kafka’s Stereoscopes written by Isak Winkel Holm and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1911, Franz Kafka encountered the Kaiser Panorama: a stereoscopic peep show offering an illusion of three-dimensional depth. After the experience, he began to emulate the apparatus in his literary sketches, developing a style we might call "stereoscopic," juxtaposing, like the optical stereoscope, two images of the same object seen from slightly different perspectives. Isak Winkel Holm argues that Kafka's stereoscopic style is crucial to an understanding of the relation between literature and politics in Kafka's work. At the level of content, the stereoscopic style offers a representation of the basic order of a specific community. At the level of form, the stereoscopic style is structured as the juxtaposition of two dissimilar images of the same community. At the level of function, finally, the style provokes a reconsideration, and perhaps even a reconfiguration, of the social order itself. With insights from literary studies, philosophical aesthetics and political theory, Kafka's Stereoscopes offers a detailed but highly readable argument for the relevance of Kafka's literary works in today's political reality.

Dangerous Children

Author : Kenneth Gross
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226819779
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

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Book Synopsis Dangerous Children by : Kenneth Gross

Download or read book Dangerous Children written by Kenneth Gross and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gross explores our complex fascination with uncanny children in works of fiction. Ranging from Victorian to modern works—Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Henry James’s What Maisie Knew, J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, Franz Kafka’s “The Cares of a Family Man,” Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Death of the Heart, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—Kenneth Gross’s book delves into stories that center around the figure of a strange and dangerous child. Whether written for adults or child readers, or both at once, these stories all show us odd, even frightening visions of innocence. We see these children’s uncanny powers of speech, knowledge, and play, as well as their nonsense and violence. And, in the tales, these child-lives keep changing shape. These are children who are often endangered as much as dangerous, haunted as well as haunting. They speak for lost and unknown childhoods. In looking at these narratives, Gross traces the reader’s thrill of companionship with these unpredictable, often solitary creatures—children curious about the adult world, who while not accommodating its rules, fall into ever more troubling conversations with adult fears and desires. This book asks how such imaginary children, objects of wonder, challenge our ways of seeing the world, our measures of innocence and experience, and our understanding of time and memory.

The Tragedy of Fatherhood

Author : Silke-Maria Weineck
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1628927895
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (289 download)

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Book Synopsis The Tragedy of Fatherhood by : Silke-Maria Weineck

Download or read book The Tragedy of Fatherhood written by Silke-Maria Weineck and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long history of fatherhood, and its entanglements with ideas of power, in Western literature, philosophy, history, and political theory.

German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife

Author : Vivian Liska
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253025001
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife by : Vivian Liska

Download or read book German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife written by Vivian Liska and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: InGerman-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife,Vivian Liska innovatively focuses on the changing form, fate and function of messianism, law, exile, election, remembrance, and the transmission of tradition itself in three different temporal and intellectual frameworks: German-Jewish modernism, postmodernism, and the current period. Highlighting these elements of theJewish tradition in the works of Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan, Liska reflects on dialogues and conversations between themandonthereception of their work.She shows how this Jewish dimension of their writings is transformed, but remains significant in the theories of Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida and how it is appropriated, dismissed or denied by some of the most acclaimed thinkers at the turn of the twenty-first century such as Giorgio Agamben, Slavoj i ek, and Alain Badiou.

Kafka's The Trial

Author : Espen Hammer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190461489
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Kafka's The Trial by : Espen Hammer

Download or read book Kafka's The Trial written by Espen Hammer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-23 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kafka's novel The Trial, written from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925, is a multi-faceted, notoriously difficult manifestation of European literary modernism, and one of the most emblematic books of the 20th Century. It tells the story of Josef K., a man accused of a crime he has no recollection of committing and whose nature is never revealed to him. The novel is often interpreted theologically as an expression of radical nihilism and a world abandoned by God. It is also read as a parable of the cold, inhumane rationality of modern bureaucratization. Like many other novels of this turbulent period, it offers a tragic quest-narrative in which the hero searches for truth and clarity (whether about himself, or the anonymous system he is facing), only to fall into greater and greater confusion. This collection of nine new essays and an editor's introduction brings together Kafka experts, intellectual historians, literary scholars, and philosophers in order to explore the novel's philosophical and theological significance. Authors pursue the novel's central concerns of justice, law, resistance, ethics, alienation, and subjectivity. Few novels display human uncertainty and skepticism in the face of rapid modernization, or the metaphysical as it intersects with the most mundane aspects of everyday life, more insistently than The Trial. Ultimately, the essays in this collection focus on how Kafka's text is in fact philosophical in the ways in which it achieves its literary aims. Rather than considering ideas as externally related to the text, the text is considered philosophical at the very level of literary form and technique.

A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia

Author : Richard T. Gray
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0313061424
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia by : Richard T. Gray

Download or read book A Franz Kafka Encyclopedia written by Richard T. Gray and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-08-30 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known for depicting alienation, frustration, and the victimization of the individual by impenetrable bureaucracies, Kafka's works have given rise to the term Kafkaesque. This encyclopedia details Kafka's life and writings. Included are more than 800 alphabetically arranged entries on his works, characters, family members and acquaintances, themes, and other topics. Most of the entries cite works for further reading, and the Encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography.

Remaking the Modern World 1900 - 2015

Author : C. A. Bayly
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1405187158
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Remaking the Modern World 1900 - 2015 by : C. A. Bayly

Download or read book Remaking the Modern World 1900 - 2015 written by C. A. Bayly and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sequel and companion volume to C.A. Bayly's ground-breaking The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914, this wide-ranging and sophisticated study explores global history since the First World War, offering a coherent, comparative overview of developments in politics, economics, and society at large. Written by one of the leading historians of his generation, an early intellectual leader in the study of World History Weaves a clear narrative history that explores the themes of politics, economics, social, cultural, and intellectual life throughout the long twentieth century Identifies the themes of state, capital, and communication as key drivers of change on a global scale in the last century, and explores the impact of those ideas Interrogates whether warfare was really the pre-eminent driving force of twentieth-century history, and what other ideas shaped the course of history in this period Explores the causes behind the resurgence of local conflict, rather than global-scale conflict, in the years since the turn of the millennium Delves into the narrative of inequality, a story that has shaped and been shaped by the events of the last hundred years Part of The Blackwell History of the World Series The goal of this ambitious series is to provide an accessible source of knowledge about the entire human past, for every curious person in every part of the world. It will comprise some two dozen volumes, of which some provide synoptic views of the history of particular regions while others consider the world as a whole during a particular period of time. The volumes are narrative in form, giving balanced attention to social and cultural history (in the broadest sense) as well as to institutional development and political change. Each provides a systematic account of a very large subject, but they are also both imaginative and interpretative. The Series is intended to be accessible to the widest possible readership, and the accessibility of its volumes is matched by the style of presentation and production.

Philology of the Flesh

Author : John T. Hamilton
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022657282X
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

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Book Synopsis Philology of the Flesh by : John T. Hamilton

Download or read book Philology of the Flesh written by John T. Hamilton and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-08-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Christian doctrine of Incarnation asserts, “the Word became Flesh.” Yet, while this metaphor is grounded in Christian tradition, its varied functions far exceed any purely theological import. It speaks to the nature of God just as much as to the nature of language. In Philology of the Flesh, John T. Hamilton explores writing and reading practices that engage this notion in a range of poetic enterprises and theoretical reflections. By pressing the notion of philology as “love” (philia) for the “word” (logos), Hamilton’s readings investigate the breadth, depth, and limits of verbal styles that are irreducible to mere information. While a philologist of the body might understand words as corporeal vessels of core meaning, the philologist of the flesh, by focusing on the carnal qualities of language, resists taking words as mere containers. By examining a series of intellectual episodes—from the fifteenth-century Humanism of Lorenzo Valla to the poetry of Emily Dickinson, from Immanuel Kant and Johann Georg Hamann to Friedrich Nietzsche, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan—Philology of the Flesh considers the far-reaching ramifications of the incarnational metaphor, insisting on the inseparability of form and content, an insistence that allows us to rethink our relation to the concrete languages in which we think and live.

From Kafka to Sebald

Author : Sabine Wilke
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1441198237
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis From Kafka to Sebald by : Sabine Wilke

Download or read book From Kafka to Sebald written by Sabine Wilke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a response to a renewed interest in narrative form in contemporary literary studies, taking up the question of literary narratives and their encounters with modernism and postmodernism within the German-language milieu. Original essays written by scholars of German and Comparative Literature approach the issue of narrative form anew, analyzing the ways in which modernist and postmodernist German-language narratives frame and/or deconstruct historical narratives. Beginning with the German-language modernist author par excellence, Franz Kafka, the volume's essays explore the unique perspective on historical change offered by literature. The authors (Kafka, Kappacher, Goll, Bernhard, Menasse, and Wolf, among others) and works interpreted in the essays included here span the period from before World War I to the post-Holocaust, post-Wall present. Individual essays focus on modernism, postmodernism, narrative theory, and autobiography.