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Joyce and Kafka

ENGL 259.301
instructor(s):

This class will be devoted to a parallel reading of Proust’s and Kafka’s major works. The authors never met but shared similar concerns and a common fascination for Flaubert’s literary model. Both explored the ways in which language structures subjectivity while meditating on faith, domination and resistance to oppression. Before examining parallels between Ulysses and The Castle,Finnegans Wake and The Trial, we will focus on the short stories and the fragments (including the epiphanies and the parables). This will allow us to investigate Joyce’s and Kafka’s diverging aesthetic theories, and also to probe the complex hermeneutics involved by their works. 

Assignments: one oral presentation and two papers (ten pages each).

fulfills requirements
Elective Seminar of the Standard Major
Sector 6: 20th Century Literature of the Standard Major