Synopses & Reviews
In 2007 the French newspaper
Le Monde published a manifesto titled “Toward a ‘World Literature in French,” signed by forty-four writers, many from Frances former colonies. Proclaiming that the francophone label encompassed people who had little in common besides the fact that they all spoke French, the manifestos proponents, the so-called francophone writers themselves, sought to energize a battle cry against the discriminatory effects and prescriptive claims of
francophonie.
In one of the first books to study the movement away from the term “francophone” to “world literature in French,” Thérèse Migraine-George engages a literary analysis of contemporary works in exploring the tensions and theoretical debates surrounding world literature in French. She focuses on works by a diverse group of contemporary French-speaking writers who straddle continents—Nina Bouraoui, Hélène Cixous, Maryse Condé, Marie NDiaye, Tierno Monénembo, and Lyonel Trouillot. What these writers have in common beyond their use of French is their resistance to the centralizing power of a language, their rejection of exclusive definitions, and their claim for creative autonomy.
Synopsis
Franz Kafka: The Ghosts in the Machine adds an original critical framework to the work begun by Stanley Corngold and Benno Wagner in their monumental collection
Franz Kafka: The Office Writings (2008). It is widely acknowledged that Kafkaandrsquo;s daytime occupation as a specialist in industrial accident insurance contributed in a significant way to his fiction.and#160;
Corngold and Wagner frame Kafkaandrsquo;s writings as cultural events, each work reflecting the economic and cultural discourses of his epoch. In pursuing Kafkaandrsquo;s avowed interest in the theory and practice of insurance, the authors view the two systems of his literary worldsandmdash;the official and the personalandmdash;as a andldquo;bundlingandrdquo; together of the various cultural accidents of Kafkaandrsquo;s time. The work of two of the leading scholars of the single most influential writer of literary modernity, Franz Kafka: The Ghosts in the Machine constitutes a breathtakingly original advance in the study of both the more famous and less well-known works of this enigmatic master.
Synopsis
Franz Kafka: The Ghosts in the Machine adds an original critical framework to the work begun by Stanley Corngold and Benno Wagner in their monumental collection
Franz Kafka: The Office Writings (2008). It is widely acknowledged that Kafkaandrsquo;s daytime occupation as a specialist in industrial accident insurance contributed in a significant way to his fiction.and#160;
and#160;
About the Author
Stanley Corngold is Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at Princeton University and the author of numerous books on Kafka as well as the editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Kafkaandrsquo;s stories.and#160;
Benno Wagner is Associate Professor of Literary Theory and German Literature, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany. He is the co-editor of the German Critical Edition of Kafkaandrsquo;s Amtliche Schriften (Office Writings) and has published widely on many aspects of Kafkaandrsquo;s work.
Table of Contents
and#160;Table of contents Authorsandrsquo; Caveat Preface: Pictures from a Collaboration Introduction Part I. Kafkaandrsquo;s Stories 1. Zarathustra on Laurentian Hill: Quandeacute;telet, Nietzsche, and Mach (Description of a Struggle) 2. The Birth of Writing from Suicide Statistics (The Judgment) 3. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Vermin (The Metamorphosis) 4. The Punch Card and the Poetandrsquo;s Body (In the Penal Colony) 5. Kafka and the Philosophy of Music; or, andldquo;des Kommas Fehl hilftandrdquo; (Researches of a Dog) 6. The Ministry of Writing (The Castle) Part II. Kafkaandrsquo;s Person, Kafkaandrsquo;s World 7. Kafka and Sex 8. Kafka (with Nietzsche) as Neo-Gnostic Thinkers 9. The Calm of Writing: Kafkaandrsquo;s Poetics of Accident 10. Dissenting Discourses: andldquo;I am not competent to decide thatandrdquo;