ENGL 265-02, Kafka's Animals, Fall 2007

Abstract

We will read most of Franz Kafka’s major short stories, two of his three novels, and excerpts from his diaries and letters along with some critical and historical literature. We will soon notice that Kafka’s fictitious characters are hybrids – often animal-human composits, such as the insectoid creature in “The Metamorphosis,” but also hybrids of different sorts, in whom the sacred and the profane, the artistic and the quotidian, the self and the other mingle and conflict. Thus, Kafka’s texts challenge our notions of personal, social, and national identity, and even our understanding of humanity itself.