Constructing China : Kafka's orientalist discourse
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Constructing China : Kafka's orientalist discourse
(Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture / edited by James Hardin)
Camden House, c1997
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [121]-129) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Kafka's interest in and use of China establish him as a principal commentator in Western discourse on the Orient.
Goebel studies four representative works by Kafka that explore the problems of the Western representation of the Orient: his 'Description of a Struggle'; several letters to Felice Bauer, offering an interpretation of Chinese poetry in connection with the conflict between writing and Kafka's love for Felice; the canonical story 'The Great Wall of China', parodically appropriating sterotypes of China's stagnant history and authoritarian emperors for a refutation of colonialist ideas of progress; and the sequel 'An Old Manuscript', dramatising China's invasion by foreign powers and the breakdown of crosscultural communication. Elucidating these themes from a broadly comparative perspective, Goebel shows Kafka to be one of German modernism's most intriguing and self-reflective writers on the Orient.
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Professor of German at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
by "Nielsen BookData"