Kafka's the Castle and the Critical Imagination

Erscheinungsjahr 1995
ISBN: 978-1-57113-004-4
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 27, 176 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 417 g

Reihe: Literary Criticism in Perspective

Survey of the criticism devoted to Kafka's The Castle, his final novel.

Kafka's final, unfinished novel, The Castle, remains one of the most celebrated yet most impenetrable masterpieces of modernist fiction, and a focus of literary criticsm and theory. In this chronological survey of the critical attention it has attracted, both academic and non-academic, Professor Dowden emphasises the acts of critical imagination which have shaped our image and understanding of Kafka and the novel. He explores the historical and cultural milieus of criticism, from the Weimar Era of Max Brod and Walter Benjamin to Lionel Trilling's Cold War to postmodern multiculturalism and 'cultural studies', showing how and why The Castle has aroused strong opinionsin each generation of criticism; he also accounts for those moments in which the novel escapes from an historically anchored understanding into the realm of the universal.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dowden, Stephen D

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Deutsche Literatur

Über Autor(innen)

Dowden, Stephen D
STEPHEN D. DOWDEN is Professor of Germanic Languages and Chair of the European Cultural Studies Program at Brandeis University.