Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung [Metamorphosis]

Ken Newton (University of Dundee)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.2: German-language Writing and Culture: Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, 800-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1915

Places

Czech Republic (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novella

Resources

Franz Kafka wrote his novella The Metamorphosis in 1912 and it was first published in 1915. Though Kafka is associated with the Modernist movement that would include figures such as T. S. Eliot and James Joyce, his writing is not formally experimental in the manner of Eliot's The Waste Land or Joyce's Ulysses. His writing, however, exhibits a literary self-consciousness that is characteristic of Modernism. The Metamorphosis is, for example, a difficult work to pin down. Is it realism or fantasy or allegory? It's hard to say categorically and this creates an uneasy relationship between text and reader. Questions concerning how one should read such a text are implicitly raised so that interpreting …

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1843 words

Citation: Newton, Ken. "Die Verwandlung". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 28 February 2003 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3593, accessed 25 November 2024.]

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