Kafka's fictional lives in contemporary literature

• Grant number: 18/14850-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: December 01, 2018
• End date: November 30, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Adriano Schwartz
• Grantee: Adriano Schwartz
• Host Institution: Escola de Artes, Ciências e Humanidades (EACH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The appropriation of writer biographies by contemporary literature is quite frequent: one critic goes so far as to say that it is not an exaggeration to think that "postmodernism's stock character is an author" (FOKKEMA, 1999, p. 41). The presence of Franz Kafka as the featured author, however, seems much more recurrent than usual, and needs to be investigated. This project will seek to study and then confront these Kafka appearances from three separate categories: works of contemporary fiction that make up moments of Kafka's biography within his real lifetime; works of contemporary fiction in which Kafka's life is prolonged beyond his death in 1924, and works of contemporary fiction that recreate his best-known text, The Metamorphosis, by figuratively reenacting the transformations and implications of the two previous categories. (AU)