LE3 .A278 2014

2014

La Rocque, Lance

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

English

English & Theatre Studies

My thesis, “Bodies Without Boundaries: Exploring the Modern Body in Franz Kafka's Short Stories,” is an exploration of the conspicuous presence in several of Franz Kafka's better-known short stories of a new and dynamic way of conceptualizing embodiment, which I link to growing concerns about the very same issue in early-twentieth- century European society. In Chapter One, I develop a historical context for exploring these concepts in Kafka's work, drawing on several of the more prominent thinkers and cultural movements surrounding a fin de siècle paradigm shift in how we, as humans, relate to our bodies. I discuss in this chapter a general trend away from Cartesian dualism toward a materially monistic conception of embodiment, and the societal and personal tensions raised by such a shift. In Chapter Two, I argue that these tensions inhere in a significant amount of the imagery and dynamics of several of Kafka's earlier short stories, and demonstrate Kafka exploring and struggling with ideas of self, transcendence, and what it means to be human under an ontology of the immanent, monistic body. In Chapter Three, I turn my attention to a selection of Kafka's later stories, and argue that these demonstrate a departure from his earlier attempts to integrate the “Modern,” immanent body into a framework of meaningfulness and spirituality, and show instead an assertion of transcendence through the ascetic rejection of the corporeal.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:1147