A special lecture by a controversial and exciting contemporary author:
James Hawes, 'Excavating Kafka: Text as Historical Artefact?'
5 pm Tuesday 4th November
The Main Hall, Taylor Institution, St Giles, Oxford
There is no need to understand German. There will be a drinks reception
afterwards.
Oxford Kafka Research Centre and Professor Karen Leeder
James Hawes' book Excavating Kafka (2008) debunks a number of key facets
of the Kafka myth,
including the idea that Kafka was the archetypal genius neglected in his
lifetime; that he was stuck in a dead-end job and struggling to find
time to
write; that he was tormented by fear of sex; that he had a uniquely
terrible,
domineering father who had no understanding of his son?s needs; that his
literature is mysterious and opaque; that he constructs fantasy-worlds
in which
innocent everymen live in fear of mysterious and totalitarian
powers-that-be.
'Hawes is one of the most audacious, obsessive and endlessly inventive
critics
of an author with whose work he is clearly and wonderfully obsessed.'
Ian Sansom, The Guardian, 13 September 2008
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