Publication details
Der (Grenz-)Raum in Franz Kafkas Erzählungen – zu den unüberwindbaren Grenzen und unendlichen Räumen
| Title in English | The (border) space in Franz Kafka's stories - to the insurmountable borders and infinite spaces |
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Research into literary spatial design is flourishing in literary studies, especially from an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspective, be it in the analysis of memory spaces, in post-colonial and colonial approaches to interpretation or in the perception of cities as texts using the prism of linguistic landscapes. Inspired by Dünne and Mahler (2015), the present article tries to pave the way for a different approach and to proceed from the outset in a disciplinary manner. It should concentrate on the literary studies specificity of the study categories “space” and “border”. Using the example of Kafka's stories, the special role of the topoi of boundaries, transgressions, places and non-places will be examined by considering space as a specific bearer of meaning, in some cases even as a key to interpretation. Such as in the story The Next Village (1920), a metaphor of infinite, insurmountable border and at the same time an infinite space, in the story Kleine Fabel (1920), which takes place in an infinitely shrinking space, or in the parable Before the Law (1915 ), in which the main hero is suggested the traumatic idea of an infinite courthouse and thus also an insurmountable border. The above-described paradox of the functional connection of the infinitely free space with an insurmountable obstacle in Kafka's short texts is regarded in this article as a meaningful element that must be taken into account in literary analysis and the consequences that arise from such a perspective are explored. |