Kafka A Very Short Introduction

Author : Ritchie Robertson
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191577936
Total Pages : 152 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kafka: A Very Short Introduction written by Ritchie Robertson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2004-10-28 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect ...' So begins Franz Kafka's most famous story Metamorphosis. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is among the most intriguing and influential writers of the twentieth century. During his lifetime he worked as a civil servant and published only a handful of short stories, the best known being The Transformation. All three of his novels, The Trial, The Castle, and The Man Who Disappeared [America], were published after his death and helped to found Kafka's reputation as a uniquely perceptive interpreter of the twentieth century. Kafka's fiction vividly evokes bizarre situations: a commercial traveller is turned into an insect, a banker is arrested by a mysterious court, a fasting artist starves to death in the name of art, a singing mouse becomes the heroine of her nation. Attending both to Kafka's crisis-ridden life and to the subtleties of his art, Ritchie Robertson shows how his work explores such characteristically modern themes as the place of the body in culture, the power of institutions over people, and the possibility of religion after Nietzsche had proclaimed 'the death of God'. The result is an up-to-date and accessible portrait of a fascinating author which shows us ways to read and make sense of his perplexing and absorbing work. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author : Ritchie Robertson
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781402775307
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.0X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kafka written by Ritchie Robertson and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, as part of the Very short introduction series.

Author : Franz Kafka
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191627046
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Hunger Artist and Other Stories written by Franz Kafka and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'In recent decades, interest in hunger artists has greatly diminished.' Kafka published two collections of short stories in his lifetime, A Country Doctor: Little Tales (1919) and A Hunger Artist: Four Stories (1924). Both collections are included in their entirety in this edition, which also contains other, uncollected stories and a selection of posthumously published works that have become part of the Kafka canon. Enigmatic, satirical, often bleakly humorous, these stories approach human experience at a tangent: a singing mouse, an ape, an inquisitive dog, and a paranoid burrowing creature are among the protagonists, as well as the professional starvation artist. A patient seems to be dying from a metaphysical wound; the war-horse of Alexander the Great steps aside from history and adopts a quiet profession as a lawyer. Fictional meditations on art and artists, and a series of aphorisms that come close to expressing Kafka's philosophy of life, further explore themes that recur in his major novels. Newly translated, and with an invaluable introduction and notes, Kafka's short stories are haunting and unforgettable. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Author : Ritchie Robertson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199689253
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Goethe written by Ritchie Robertson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robertson covers the life and work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832): scientist, administrator, artist, art critic, and literary writer in a variety of genres.

Author : Ilan Stavans
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190076992
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Jewish Literature: A Very Short Introduction written by Ilan Stavans and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Jewish literature is a kaleidoscopic one, multilingual and transnational in character, spanning the globe as well as the centuries. In this broad, thought-provoking introduction to Jewish literature from 1492 to the present, cultural historian Ilan Stavans focuses on its multilingual and transnational nature. Stavans presents a wide range of traditions within Jewish literature and the variety of writers who made those traditions possible. Represented are writers as dissimilar as Luis de Carvajal the Younger, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Isaac Babel, Anzia Yezierska, Elias Canetti, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Irving Howe, Clarice Lispector, Susan Sontag, Philip Roth, Grace Paley, Amos Oz, Moacyr Scliar, and David Grossman. The story of Jewish literature spans the globe as well as the centuries, from the marrano poets and memorialists of medieval Spain, to the sprawling Yiddish writing in Ashkenaz (the "Pale of Settlement' in Eastern Europe), to the probing narratives of Jewish immigrants to the United States and other parts of the New World. It also examines the accounts of horror during the Holocaust, the work of Israeli authors since the creation of the Jewish State in 1948, and the "ingathering" of Jewish works in Brazil, Bulgaria, Argentina, and South Africa at the end of the twentieth century. This kaleidoscopic introduction to Jewish literature presents its subject matter as constantly changing and adapting.

Author : Michael Ferber
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191614262
Total Pages : 168 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Romanticism: A Very Short Introduction written by Michael Ferber and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-09-23 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Romanticism? In this Very Short Introduction Michael Ferber answers this by considering who the romantics were and looks at what they had in common — their ideas, beliefs, commitments, and tastes. He looks at the birth and growth of Romanticism throughout Europe and the Americas, and examines various types of Romantic literature, music, painting, religion, and philosophy. Focusing on topics, Ferber looks at the 'Sensibility' movement, which preceded Romanticism; the rising prestige of the poet; Romanticism as a religious trend; Romantic philosophy and science; Romantic responses to the French Revolution; and the condition of women. Using examples and quotations he presents a clear insight into this very diverse movement, and offers a definition as well as a discussion of the word 'Romantic' and where it came from. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author : Espen Hammer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190461454
Total Pages : 313 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kafka's the Trial written by Espen Hammer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kafka's novel The Trial, written from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925, is a multi-faceted, notoriously difficult manifestation of European literary modernism, and one of the most emblematic books of the 20th Century. It tells the story of Josef K., a man accused of a crime he has no recollection of committing and whose nature is never revealed to him. The novel is often interpreted theologically as an expression of radical nihilism and a world abandoned by God. It is also read as a parable of the cold, inhumane rationality of modern bureaucratization. Like many other novels of this turbulent period, it offers a tragic quest-narrative in which the hero searches for truth and clarity (whether about himself, or the anonymous system he is facing), only to fall into greater and greater confusion. This collection of nine new essays and an editor's introduction brings together Kafka experts, intellectual historians, literary scholars, and philosophers in order to explore the novel's philosophical and theological significance. Authors pursue the novel's central concerns of justice, law, resistance, ethics, alienation, and subjectivity. Few novels display human uncertainty and skepticism in the face of rapid modernization, or the metaphysical as it intersects with the most mundane aspects of everyday life, more insistently than The Trial. Ultimately, the essays in this collection focus on how Kafka's text is in fact philosophical in the ways in which it achieves its literary aims. Rather than considering ideas as externally related to the text, the text is considered philosophical at the very level of literary form and technique.

Author : Nicholas Boyle
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199206597
Total Pages : 185 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book German Literature: A Very Short Introduction written by Nicholas Boyle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-02-28 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: German writers, be it Goethe, Nietzsche, Marx, Brecht or Mann, have had a profound influence on the modern world. This Very Short Introduction illuminates the particular character and power of German literature, and examines its impact on the wider cultural world.

Author : Christopher Butler
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192804413
Total Pages : 137 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Modernism: A Very Short Introduction written by Christopher Butler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-29 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compact introduction to modernism--why it began, what it is, and how it hasshaped virtually all aspects of 20th and 21st century life

Author : Peter S. Ungar
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199670595
Total Pages : 153 pages
Book Rating : 4.98/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Teeth: A Very Short Introduction written by Peter S. Ungar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teeth are a vital component of vertebrate anatomy and a fundamental part of the fossil record. It was the evolution of teeth, associated with predation, that drove the evolution of the wide array of fish, amphibians, reptiles, and then mammals. Peter S. Ungar looks at how, without teeth, none of these developments could have occurred.