Kafka, 12 Weeks, GAYLEY
S 2024

Description

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature.  

The poet W. H. Auden called Kafka "the Dante of the twentieth century". The novelist Vladimir Nabokov placed him among the greatest writers of the 20th century. Gabriel García Márquez noted the reading of Kafka's The Metamorphosis showed him "that it was possible to write in a different way".  Others, such as Thomas Mann, see Kafka's work as allegorical: a quest, metaphysical in nature, for God

In this SDG, we will start with reading Kafka’s Letter to his Father and then  Dostoevsky’s Notes from The Underground in order to start getting to know him and keep Dostoevsky in mind who heavily influenced him - Kafka called him his blood relative.  We will then dive in reading his work starting with Metamorphosis while  comparing and discussing similarities and influences and analyzing and trying to understand his role in existentialism and absurdism of life,

Weekly Topics

1. A Letter to My Father, 1919- who was Franz Kafka?

2. Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1864

3. Notes from the Underground

4. Metamorphosis, 1915

5. The Trial, 1914

6. The Trial

7. Amerika, 1912 and later

8. Amerika

9. In The Penal Colony- 1919, The Judgement-1913

10. A Hunger Artist-1922, A Country Doctor-1918

11.  The Castle, 1922

12.  The Castle



Bibliography

Feyodor Dostoevsky: Notes from the Underground

Franz Kafka: The Complete Short Stories and

Essential Kafka