Franz Kafka And His Prague Contexts

Franz Kafka And His Prague Contexts
by Nekula / / / EPUB


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Franz Kafka is by far the Prague author most widely read and admired internationally. However, his reception in Czechoslovakia, launched by the Liblice conference in 1963, has been conflicted. While rescuing Kafka from years of censorship and neglect, Czech critics of the 1960s overwrote his German and Jewish literary and cultural contexts in order to focus on his Czech cultural connections. Seeking to rediscover Kafkas multiple backgrounds, in Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts Marek Nekula focuses on Kafkas Jewish social and literary networks in Prague, his German and Czech bilingualism, and his knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew. Kafkas bilingualism is discussed in the context of contemporary essentialist views of a writers organic language and identity. Nekula also pays particular attention to Kafkas education, examining his studies of Czech language and literature as well as its role in his intellectual life. The book concludes by asking how Kafka read his urban environment, looking at the readings of Prague encoded in his fictional and nonfictional texts. Nekulas work has had a major impact on our understanding of Kafkas relation to the complex social, cultural and linguistic environment of early twentiethcentury Prague. While little of this work has been available in English until now, the present volume translates many of his most important studies, and includes revisions and expansions appearing now for the first time. Nekula challenges stubborn clichs and opens important new perspectives: readers interested in questions relating to Kafka and Prague will find this an essential and richly rewarding book. Peter Zusi, University College London Marek Nekulas important book originally situates Franz Kafka within his Pragueand Czech contexts. It critically examines numerous distortions that accompanied the reception of Kafka, starting with the central issue of Kafkas languages(Kafkas Czech, Prague German), and the ideological discourse surrounding the author in communist Czechoslovakia. Astute and carefully argued, Franz Kafka and his Prague Contexts offers new perspectives on the writings of the Prague author. This book will benefit readers in German and Slavic Studies, in Comparative Literature, and History of Ideas. Veronika Tuckerov, Harvard University Marek Nekula pipravil soubor studi o tom, jak Praha formovala Kafkovu osobnost a dlo. Kniha zan kritickou diskuz o problematickm pijmn Franze Kafky v eskoslovensku, kter zaalo na konferenci v Liblici v roce 1963. Zde byl Kafka zachrnn ped cenzurou za cenu "pepsn" jeho nmeckho a idovskho literrnho a kulturnho kontextuclem vyzdvihnout esk vliv na jeho tvorbu. Studie se zamuj na idovsk sociln a literrn prosted v Praze, Kafkovu nmecko-eskou dvojjazynost a jeho znalost jidi a hebrejtiny. Kafkv bilingvismus je probrn v kontextu souasnch esencialistickch nzor na spisovatelv jazyk a identitu. Nekula tak vnuje zvltn pozornost Kafkovu vzdln, zkoum jeho studia eskho jazyka a literatury, jako i jeho eskou etbu a jej roli v jeho intelektulnm ivot. Knihu uzavr otzkou, jak Kafka etl sv mstsk prosted.

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