A negative origin in Franz Kafka's The castle

• Grant number: 12/06972-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2012
• End date: February 28, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Jeanne Marie Gagnebin de Bons
• Grantee: Tomaz Amorim Fernandes Izabel
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to analyse the novel "The Castle", by the chech writer Franz Kafka, throught the search of a negative concept of origin in his work. By comparing the novel and writer's other writings, we will try to develop the hypothesis that the lack of the memory of the origin results in the paralization of the plot on the present time. This hypotheses will take on account leading interpreters and researchers of Kafka's work, as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Marthe Robert, Günther Anders and Klaus Wagenbach. The multidisciplinarity of the subject will also require an approuch that account the Judaism, as the religious context fo the writer, and the Modernity, as the socio-historical and aesthetic context.We should stick to a few categories that we believe are essential and try to analyze how they help constitute this strange temporality: the indeterminacy, or even the absence of origin, the incompleteness of the narrative and the difficulty of finding a conclusion, an ending; paralysis of temporality in a present that lasts, rather than introduces a further change, the presence of a latent and threatening past that is forgotten and immemorial in the present, the theme of hesitation, especially in Kafka's Diaries, finally, the question of origin in relation to the doctrine of 'original sin' or 'inherited sin' (Erbsünde).

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

IZABEL, Tomaz Amorim Fernandes. Negative origin in Franz Kafka's literature: The Castle and other narratives. 2013. Master's Dissertation - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem Campinas, SP.