1991 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Prague German Literature at the Turn of the Century and the Urban Space s the Frame of Imagination
| Project/Area Number |
01510289
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
独語・独文学
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| Research Institution | Kyoto University |
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Principal Investigator |
HIRONO Yoshihiko Kyoto University, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Assistant Professor, 教養部, 助教授 (50079109)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1989 – 1991
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| Keywords | Kafka / Mauthner / Critique of Language / "Assanierung" / Metaphors of Illness / "Prague Manierism" / Rilke / Cemetry and Quarry |
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| Research Abstract |
This Research aimed at explaining the Prague German literature at the turn of the century in the geographical and social-historical frame of that city. According to the ideas of the main paners which the head investigator published in the term of project, the newly gained results are as follows :
1)Kafka's unfinished novel "Beschreibung eines Kampfes" contains a counitional and language-critical problem. In comparison with the philosophical works of Fritz Mauthner, another German-Jewish writer, we can establish Kafka's conversion from nominalism to realism.
2)It is related to the situation of the German-Jewish society in Prague which was confronted with the anti-Semitic nationalism of the Czech masses. This subject is also treated in the aspect of urbanism, and that in the context of the changing cityscaoe, for example the demolition of the ghetto which was in progress under the name of "Assanierung".
3)"Assanierung" was connected with the drainage work in the whole of Prague. The metaphors of illness which are opposed with such a hygienics appear in Meyrink's "Golem", Lerppin's "Das Gespenst der Judenstadt" and Kafka's "Die Verwandlung". These novels stand so in the tradition of the so-called Prague Manierism in the 16. and 17. century.
4)Rilke's some early works and Kafka's "Der Prozejbeta" show the complex images of cemetery and quarry. The topography of the suburbs figured by the stones describes the life world of the Germans, the German-Jews and the Czechs at the fin de siecle and the turn of the century under the phase of alienation.
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