Kafka's Jewish Languages
The Hidden Openness of Tradition
University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. · Print & ebook · January 10, 2012
After Franz Kafka died in 1924, his novels and short stories were published in ways that downplayed both their author's roots in Prague and his engagement with Jewish tradition and language, so as to secure their place in the German literary canon.
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- Who it’s for
- David Suchoff traces how Yiddish, Hebrew, and Jewish tradition shape Kafka’s style and literary significance.
- Genres
- Jewish Literary Criticism, German Literary Criticism, 20th-Century Literary Criticism
- Published
- University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc., January 10, 2012
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After Franz Kafka died in 1924, his novels and short stories were published in ways that downplayed both their author's roots in Prague and his engagement with Jewish tradition and language, so as to secure their place in the German literary canon. Now, nearly a century after Kafka began to create his fictions, Germany, Israel, and the Czech Republic lay claim to his legacy. Kafka's Jewish Languages brings Kafka's stature as a specifically Jewish writer into focus.
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David Suchoff explores the Yiddish and modern Hebrew that inspired Kafka's vision of tradition. Citing the Jewish sources crucial to the development of Kafka's style, the book demonstrates the intimate relationship between the author's Jewish modes of expression and the larger literary significance of his works. Suchoff shows how "The Judgment" evokes Yiddish as a language of comic curse and examines how Yiddish, African American, and culturally Zionist voices appear in the unfinished novel, Amerika. In his reading of The Trial, Suchoff highlights the black humor Kafka learned from the Yiddish theater, and he interprets The Castle in light of Kafka's involvement with the renewal of the Hebrew language. Finally, he uncovers the Yiddish and Hebrew meanings behind Kafka's "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse-Folk" and considers the recent legal case in Tel Aviv over the possession of Kafka's missing manuscripts as a parable of the transnational meanings of his writing.
Kafka’s Jewish Languages
David Suchoff traces how Yiddish, Hebrew, and Jewish tradition shape Kafka’s style and literary significance.
Come here for
- Yiddish and modern Hebrew in Kafka’s literary vision
- Jewish sources behind “The Judgment,” Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle
Expect
- Readings of Kafka’s named works through Jewish languages and sources
- A discussion of the Tel Aviv case over Kafka’s missing manuscripts
Where it sits
| Jewish Literary Criticism | 86% |
|---|---|
| 20th-Century Literary Criticism | 63% |
| German Literary Criticism | 55% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- German Literary Criticism
- Authors
- David Suchoff
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
- Published
- January 10, 2012
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- German Literary Criticism