Constructing China: Kafka's Orientalist Discourse
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A01=Rolf J. Goebel
Author_Rolf J. Goebel
Category=DSBH
China
Chinese Poetry
Colonialism
Crosscultural Communication
Description of a Struggle
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
German Modernism
Kafka
Orientalist Discourse
Progress
Product details
- ISBN 9781571131447
- Weight: 380g
- Dimensions: 386 x 579mm
- Publication Date: 06 Nov 1997
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Kafka's interest in and use of China establish him as a principal commentator in Western discourse on the Orient.
Goebel studies four representative works by Kafka that explore the problems of the Western representation of the Orient: his 'Description of a Struggle'; several letters to Felice Bauer, offering an interpretation of Chinese poetry in connection with the conflict between writing and Kafka's love for Felice; the canonical story 'The Great Wall of China', parodically appropriating sterotypes of China's stagnant history and authoritarian emperors for a refutation of colonialist ideas of progress; and the sequel 'An Old Manuscript', dramatising China's invasion by foreign powers and the breakdown of crosscultural communication. Elucidating these themes from a broadly comparative perspective, Goebel shows Kafka to be one of German modernism's most intriguing and self-reflective writers on the Orient.
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Professor of German at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
ROLF J. GOEBEL is Distinguished Professor of German, Emeritus, at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
