CET Syllabus of Record

Program: CET Prague Course Title: Central Europe in Literature Course Code: PR/CEST 320 Total Hours: 45 Recommended Credits: 3 Primary Discipline / Suggested Cross Listings: Central European Studies / Jewish Studies, Literature Language of Instruction: English Prerequisites/Requirements: Open to all students in spring only

Description The course focuses on modern authors of Central and Eastern Europe, specifically on writers who were active in the Czech lands and Vienna. Particular attention is given to the problems of modern urban identity, and the cultural problems linked with the rise of nationalism and the Jewish emancipation, assimilation and integration processes.

Joseph Roth’s depiction of the changing “human condition” in Central Europe between 1848 and 1918 in his novel, The Radetzky March, creates a reading of Central Europe both as a historically specific system of institutions, ideologies, networks, careers and dispositions, and as an imaginary space of creative memory. Following an historical chronology, the course covers the changing concept of individual and collective identity before World War I, referencing the move from a symbolist conception of a multidimensional world towards the irony of the parable of vanishing meaning in the works of Prague and Viennese writers (A. Schnitzler, H. von Hofmannsthal, K. Hlaváček, P. Leppin, G. Meyrink, F. Kafka); possibilities of coexistence and ideological stereotypes as forms of anti-knowledge – “the world of yesterday” and its collapse (J. Roth, R. Musil, J. Hašek); the breaking up of European value-systems and forms (H. Ungar, H. Broch, B. Schulz, J. Langer, K. Poláček); representations of the city and the body; notions of decline to chaos; fundamental reduction of existence; social determination in contrast to tradition; and memory as a resource of understanding the other. Literary traditions of Central Europe become also the palimpsest of reading and writing in the work of more contemporary writers from the countries of the former Habsburg Empire and provide an insight into their post-Holocaust histories (J. Weil, H. Grynberg, D. Kis).

All readings contribute to a better understanding of the changes of the modern situation in which Jewish identity represents a specific margin, a limit of the “human condition” of Central Europe and, in this sense, acquires a universal meaning.

Objectives During this course, students:  Develop basic knowledge about modern Central European culture

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CET Syllabus of Record

 Learn to read literary modernism, both in terms of understanding the use of figurative language and representation, and as an expression of the quest for identity  Understand the Jewish condition as a specific, irreplaceable contribution to the meaning of the Central European experience, and one that is related to historical bonds of politics and its institutions, arts and literature, ideology, science and religion

Course Requirements The course is designed as a series of guided discussions outlined by brief lecture-based introductions to the assigned readings. Students read approximately 200 pages per week and should come to class prepared to discuss actively. In addition, each student serves as discussion facilitator for one class session and introduces the reading to the class in an oral presentation.

Over the course of the term, students submit 3 short response papers. These are 1 to 2 pages in length and demonstrate students’ thorough reading of and engagement with the material before the class session.

Students submit a final analytical paper of about 10 pages that focuses on questions and examines a specific aspect of the text. Students should include a discussion of relevant reference materials where possible.

Students are expected to abide by CET’s attendance policy.

Methods of Evaluation The final grade is determined as follows: Oral presentations 25% Participation and weekly reading 10% Response papers (10 % each) 30% Final paper 35%

Primary Texts Hermann Broch. The Sleepwalkers. Vintage International Press, 1996. Ladislav Fuks. Mr. Theodore Mundstock. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991. Theodore Mundstock. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1991. Henryk Grynberg. The Jewish War and The Victory. Northwestern, Evanston, Illinois, 2001. Egon Hostovsk. The Arsonist. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 1996. Franz Kafka. Collected Short Stories. New York: Shocken, 1996. Franz Kafka. The Trial. New York: Shocken, 1995. Jiří Mordechaj Langer. Nine Gates to the Chasidic Mysteries. Translated by Stephen Jolly, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1993 [1937]. Gustav Meyrink. The Golem. Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1995. Karel Poláček. What Ownership‘s All About. North Haven, CT: Catbird Press, 1993. Joseph Roth. Three Novellas. Overlook TP. 2003. Joseph Roth. The Wandering Jews. W.W. Norton and Company, 2001.

CET Syllabus of Record

Arthur Schnitzler. “Professor Bernhardi” in A. Schnitzler, Round Dance and Other Plays. Translated by J. M. Q. Davies. Oxford University Press, 2004. Hermann Ungar. The Maimed. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 2005. Jiří Weil: Life with a Star. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998.

Supplementary Texts William M. Johnston. The Austrian Mind – An Intellectual and Social History 1848-1938. University of California Press, 1972. William O. McCagg, Jr. A History of Habsburg Jews 1670-1918. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992. Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund. “Notes On Kafka”, in T. W. A., Prisms, translated by Samuel and Shiery Weber, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1983. Anderson, Mark M. “The Traffic of Clothes: Meditation and Description of a Struggle” and “‘Jewish Music? Otto Weininger and ‘Josephine the Singer’”, in M. M. A.: Kafka‘s Clothes: Ornament and Aestheticism in the Habsburg Fin-de-siècle, Oxford University Press, New York, 1994. Benjamin, Walter. “Franz Kafka” and “Some Reflections on Kafka”, in W. B.: Illuminations, Schocken Books, New York, 1969. The Cambridge Companion to Kafka, 2002. Deleuze, Gilles, Guattari, Félix. Chapters 1 – 3 from Kafka: Toward Minor Literature, University Of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1986. Gilman, Sander L. “On Difference, Language, and Mice”, in S. L. G.: Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient, Routledge, New York – London, 1995. Kahl, Frederick Robert Franz Kafka, A Representative Man, 1991. Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka, 1984. Politzer, Heinz. “Juvenilia: The Artist As a Bachelor” and “The Breakthrough: 1912”, in H. P.: Franz Kafka. Parable And Paradox, second, revised edition, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 1966. Robertson, Ritchie. Kafka: Judaism, Politics and Literature, 1985. Spector, Scott. Prague Territories. National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka Fin-de- Siècle. Los Angeles-Berkeley-London: The University of California Press, 2000.

Outline of Course Content Note: This course is offered in the spring semester only.

Topic 1 – Literatures of Central and Eastern Europe, An Introduction What is Central Europe The Ghetto Nationalism

Topic 2 – Modern Intellectual at the Frontier Vienna 1900 Anti-Semitism in Modern Central Europe

CET Syllabus of Record

Topic 3 – Dissolution of the Self-Symbolic Prague 1900: Czechs-Germans-Jews, Representations of the City

Topic 4 – Anxiety as a Limit of the Human Condition Kafka--1910: The year of change, the Prague Circle

Topic 5 – Modern Parable of Existence Accident and Necessity Allegory of justice: The Trial

Topic 6 – Deconstruction of Personal and Collective Memory The Holocaust, survivors and interpreting the postwar period

Topic 7 –Reduction of Human Qualities Psychoanalysis and its impact on fiction

Topic 8 – Inner Ghetto and the Possibilities of Communication in a World of Chaos The technique of manipulation, subjection and the prevalence of cliché

Topic 9 – Memory and Tradition in Confrontation with History and Modern Knowledge Personal and collective mythology

Topic 10 – The Disappearance of the Empirical and the Experience of Yesterday’s World The Wandering Jews and “other renegades” The sense of possibility

Topic 11 – The Relevance of Central European Conditions Distortion of experience Definitions of Central Europe

Topic 12 – Recording the Self and the Meaning of Contingency in “Total” Times The first reflections on the Holocaust and Communism

Topic 13 – Values Experienced and Values Created Central Europe as a Concept