Scott D. Denham
Fall 1999
| requirements | credit |
| grading | readings |
| schedule | links |
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Scott D. Denham |
German/CIS 441
Fall 1999 |
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| Franz Kafka and the Modern Novel |
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A Seminar for careful readers.This course will explore Kafka's role in constructing the modernist canon, both by indirect proximity and direct influence. The goals of the course are threefold. First, we will master the major works of Kafka's oeuvre including Amerika, The Trial, The Castle, most of the major stories (such as "The Metamorphosis," "A Country Doctor," "The Burrow," "Investigations of a Dog," "In the Penal Colony," "Report to an Academy"), the parables, and substantial selections from the diaries and letters. Second, we will examine how Kafka, "the Kafkaesque," and certain general elements of a modern consciousness developed in his works make themselves known in, and are challenged by, the narrative fictions of selected modern authors: Camus's The Fall, Borges's Labyrinths collection, Calvino's Invisible Cities, Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, Kundera's Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Virginia Woolf's Orlando. And third, we will gain a practical knowledge of narrative theory as an especially useful theoretical approach to both Kafka and to modern narrative fiction, most specifically in the narrative theory of Gerard Genette, Mieke Bal, Dorrit Cohn, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, and Umberto Eco.
Course
Requirements top
1. Attendance
is required. Discuss special circumstances with me beforehand.
2. Participation is required, that is, you must have read the assigned texts and you should be prepared to discuss them and write about them.
3. You must keep
a journal for this course. Record in your journal several
times a week your experiences of reading Kafka and the other novels and
materials in the course. You might like to react to and question
the texts, the characters and their motivations, the worlds Kafka creates,
and Kafka himself. You might discover and discuss Kafka's presence--if
any--in the other novels, or how his modernist innovations resonate in
them. You can respond to and disagree with what goes on in class
discussions: my statements and interpretations, those of other students,
and those presented in seminar papers. Here, too, you can try out
paper ideas and essays, note words and passages that don't make sense,
record ideas and questions for discussion, and copy out favorite quotations.
It will be especially helpful for you to write about the texts assigned
for class.
You must keep a hand-written journal in a bound notebook or blank
diary or sketchbook; use a good dark pen with a firm line. (No typing,
no computers, no e-mail.) You give me a photocopy of your current journal
entries each week in class. I may read aloud or hand out excerpts
of your writing to the class for discussion; I also usually give out a
page or two of "Journal Notes," a selection of your own journal entries
and my comments which you should pick up at my office on Fridays (after
3:00pm). It is here that I will make additional assignments, assign
group work, praise you, scold you. If something you write should
not be read or heard by anyone other than me simply note this in the margins
of your journal. Though I do not want to push or constrain you in
your writing I expect you will write something like 1000 to 2000 words
per week, or what would be equal to a typed single spaced page or two at
each of three or four sittings. In clean, tight longhand on letter-sized
paper this would be some eight to sixteen pages per week. This may sound
like a lot now, but the ease with which you will find yourself writing
in your journal may surprise you, especially if you have never kept a journal
before. And compared to what Kafka often wrote in letters and in his diaries,
this is modest.
4. Each of you presents a substantial seminar paper to the class during the second half of the semester. Ideally the papers should be comparative and confrontational; they should treat relationships between one of the other novels (or stories, in the case of Borges) and Kafka, his works, or his influences. Seminar papers are to be between 10 and 15 pages long and must follow Chicago or Modern Language Association style guidelines; be sure to review definitions of plagiarism and proper methods of citation in style books and in the Davidson College "Honor Code" pamphlet. Your papers must be submitted to me and the other class participants (i.e. copies for everyone including me, plus one for you) by 5:00 on the Friday preceding your Monday class presentation. (Use a commercial copy shop or central services rather than the library machines or the Belk laser printer.) For such class meetings all participants will read the assigned novel and Kafka texts as well as the two or three papers to be presented. Paper presentation dates, and thus also the paired texts to be written about, are assigned randomly during the second class meeting.
5. Group presentations. Several times throughout the semester designated small groups will present brief interpretations of a specific work or problem or question.
6. There will be a final examination during exam period. It will consist of passages for indentification and two essays.
Credit
top
1. Students
taking the course for German major credit read the German texts in German.
2. Students wishing to receive major credit for this course in another literature major can do so at the discretion of their own major advisers and departments; I will provide letters of support for such petitions when necessary.
Course
Grading top
Journals, class
participation and presentations, essays, and the exam are each worth a
quarter of the total course grade. Any absences, late papers, unprepared
presentations, otherwise inadequate preparation or participation will be
penalized substantially.
Required
Texts top
Bal, Mieke. Narratology,
Introduction to the Theory of Narrative.2nd ed. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1997.
Borges, Jorge
Luis. Labyrinths. NY: Modern Library, 1984.
Calvino, Italo.
Invisible
Cities. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1978.
Camus, Albert.
The
Stranger. NY: Vintage, 1989.
Coetzee, J. M.
Waiting for the Barbarians. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1982.
Cohn, Dorrit.
Transparent
Minds. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978.
Eco, Umberto.
Six
Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994.
Kafka, Franz.
Amerika.
NY: Schocken, 1996.
______. The
Castle. NY: Schocken, 1999.
______. The
Complete Stories. NY: Schocken, 1995.
______. Diaries
of Franz Kafka 1914-1923. NY: Schocken, 1987.
______. Letters
to Felice. NY: Schocken, 1988. (out of print)
______. The
Trial. NY: Schocken, 1998.
______. Letters
to Friends, Family, and Editors. NY: Schocken, 1990.
Kundera, Milan.
The
Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Harmondsworth,Middlesex: Penguin,
1987.
Rimmon-Kenan,
Shlomith. Narrative Fiction. NY: Routledge, 1983.
Woolf, Virginia.
Orlando.
NY: Viking Penguin.
NB: These editions have been ordered at the college bookstore, though you may use any edition you wish. (This despite the fact that some of Kafka's editions vary widely--a point we will discuss in class.) Because the cost of all these books is substantial, I encourage you to search out a good used bookstore and give an old book a new life. German majors and others reading in German please purchase your own German texts; any edition will do of the novels, the Sämtliche Erzählungen, Briefe an Felice, Tagebücher, and the Briefe an Freunde. I also encourage anyone able to read any other of the translated works (by Camus, Borges, Calvino, or Kundera) in their original language to do so.
Style Manuals
The Chicago
Manual of Style. 14th ed. or later. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press.
The Bedford
Handbook.
Joseph Gibaldi
and Walter Achert. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
New York: Modern Language Association, 1984 or later ed.
Francine Wattman
Frank and Paula A. Treichler. "Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage" in
Language
Gender and Professional Writing. NY: MLA, 1989.
Schedule
top
| Week
1
23.8. |
Introductions
"Before the Law" The Trial |
Journal
due
Pick up Journal Notes each Friday |
| Week 2
30.8. |
The Trial
Eco diary selections |
Journal due
paper assignment lottery Eco presentations Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 3
6.9. |
parables (specifics
tba)
Rimmon-Kenan |
Journal due
Rimmon-Kenan presentations Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 4
13.9. |
major stories
"Metamorphosis," "Blumfeld," "Little Woman," A Country Doctor," "In the
Penal Colony," "Hungerartist" (and others tba)
early diaries Bal |
Journal due
Bal presentations Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 5
20.9. |
animal stories:
"The Burrow," "Josephine," "Report to an Academy," "Investigations of a
Dog" (and others tba)
Cohn (especially sections on The Castle) |
Journal due
Cohn presentations Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 6
27.9. |
Amerika [Lost Without a Trace] | Journal due
Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 7
4.10. |
The Castle | Journal due
Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 8
11.10. |
Fall Break, no class | |
| Week 9
18.10. |
writing week, no class, | individual meetings
with me about papers onMonday and Tuesday
Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 10
25.10. |
Kundera | previous Friday
(22.10.): Kundera essays due outside my office by 5:00pm, copies enough
for all
Journal and critiques due Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 11
1.11. |
Borges | previous Friday:
essays due outside my office by 5:00pm
Journal and critiques due Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 12
8.11. |
Woolf | previous Friday:
essays due outside my office by 5:00pm
Journal and critiques due Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 13
15.11. |
Camus | previous Friday:
essays due outside my office by 5:00pm
Journal and critiques due Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 14
22.11. |
Calvino | previous Friday:
essays due outside my office by 5:00pm
Journal and critiques due Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 15
29.11. |
Coetzee | previous Friday:
essays due outside my office by 5:00pm
Journal and critiques due Pick up Journal Notes Friday |
| Week 16
6.12. |
final dinner, rewrites due | final Journal
due
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| Week 17
13.12. |
exam week 10.-16.12. | write exam during exam period |
The background image is from a manuscript page from Kafka's novel Das Schloß [The Castle].