Ed. commerciale de thèse : Habilitationsschrift : Köln : 2000. / Bibliogr. p. [372]-393. Index.

This dissertation takes as its premise the belief that privileging the text of a play as the site of meaning is inadequate, given the social nature of theatre. This privileging is evident in the low critical opinion of dramatic adaptations of prose works: the dramatic text, incomplete by nature, cannot compete with the self-sufficient narrative text which it adapts. Rather, as described in the introductory chapter, the socio-historical context of a production must be investigated to flesh out the meaning of the text. Four theatrical adaptations of Franz Kafka's novel Der Prozefi (1925) illustrate a history not only of Kafka reception, but also of society, politics and theatrical practice in Europe and North America. The first adaptation, Le Proces (1947), by Jean-Louis Barrault and Andre Gide, is interpreted in the second chapter in the context of post-Occupation tensions in France, including a sense of guilt left by collaboration. Against an intellectual backdrop of existentialism and absurdism, Le Proces renders Joseph K. as a Jewish victim of unjust authorities. The third chapter describes actor/playwright Steven Berkoff’s antipathy to the middle-class conformism of 1970s Britain, which turns his adaptation, The Trial (1973), into a highly personal protest in which K. is destroyed by bourgeois "mediocrity." Peter Weiss's German adaptation, Der Prozefi (1975), treated in the fourth chapter, attempts more sweeping Marxist social criticism, depicting Kafka's world as a historically specific Eastern Europe in the days leading up to the Great War: K. is a bank employee who, by refusing to ally himself with the workers, seals his own fate under exploitative capitalism. Finally, Sally Clark's Canadian The Trial of Judith K. (1989) is described in the fifth chapter as a cross-gender revision of the novel reflecting both a feminist critique of male oppression and the freedom of interpretation of canonical works enabled by North America's relative intellectual isolation from the canon's European roots. K., as a victim of patriarchy, is a woman. The diversity of these four adaptations pleads for the acceptance of dramatic adaptation as a creative form of interpretation, rather than as an ill-advised misappropriation, of its source.

Zugl.: Bonn, Universiẗat, Diss., 2007.

Thesis (M.A.)--McGill University, 1999. / Written for the Dept. of German Studies. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation takes as its premise the belief that privileging the text of a play as the site of meaning is inadequate, given the social nature of theatre. This privileging is evident in the low critical opinion of dramatic adaptations of prose works: the dramatic text, incomplete by nature, cannot compete with the self-sufficient narrative text which it adapts. Rather, as described in the introductory chapter, the socio-historical context of a production must be investigated to flesh out the meaning of the text. Four theatrical adaptations of Franz Kafka's novel Der Prozefi (1925) illustrate a history not only of Kafka reception, but also of society, politics and theatrical practice in Europe and North America. The first adaptation, Le Proces (1947), by Jean-Louis Barrault and Andre Gide, is interpreted in the second chapter in the context of post-Occupation tensions in France, including a sense of guilt left by collaboration. Against an intellectual backdrop of existentialism and absurdism, Le Proces renders Joseph K. as a Jewish victim of unjust authorities. The third chapter describes actor/playwright Steven Berkoff’s antipathy to the middle-class conformism of 1970s Britain, which turns his adaptation, The Trial (1973), into a highly personal protest in which K. is destroyed by bourgeois "mediocrity." Peter Weiss's German adaptation, Der Prozefi (1975), treated in the fourth chapter, attempts more sweeping Marxist social criticism, depicting Kafka's world as a historically specific Eastern Europe in the days leading up to the Great War: K. is a bank employee who, by refusing to ally himself with the workers, seals his own fate under exploitative capitalism. Finally, Sally Clark's Canadian The Trial of Judith K. (1989) is described in the fifth chapter as a cross-gender revision of the novel reflecting both a feminist critique of male oppression and the freedom of interpretation of canonical works enabled by North America's relative intellectual isolation from the canon's European roots. K., as a victim of patriarchy, is a woman. The diversity of these four adaptations pleads for the acceptance of dramatic adaptation as a creative form of interpretation, rather than as an ill-advised misappropriation, of its source. / Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies / Graduate

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2009

Zugl.: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 2007

The following study investigates the fictional works of an early twentieth century Czechoslovakian writer named Franz Kafka. "The space of Kafka" is explored primarily through the "identity" of his characteristic monster figures and the temporally disjunctive narratives through which they travel. Monstrosity is qualified here as a principal mode of translation through which Kafka engaged the very terms of "identity" which an "individual" faces in the appearance of any "work". The intimations of a monstrous self are probed through Kafka's work in relation to human experience, intentionality, alterity and a "present" which is en-acted specifically as one form of the past. Through Kafka's paradigmatic "monster", "double" and "bachelor" figures, we find not "alternative" orientations of the "self" which contemporary literature and architecture may choose to undertake, but intrinsic re-presentations of the very relation which any self, any author, already is in the appearance of a "work".

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) wrote this little phrase one day in a notebook: Writing as a form of prayer. This dissertation will examine his highly personal and Judaic conception of the act of writing in order to demonstrate that it constitutes in fact the cornerstone of Kafka's activity as a writer and that it can be traced in a significant number of his literary works as their regulating instance. / In order to do so, we will first examine the social, political and economic conditions prevailing in Central Europe at the turn of the 20th century, in order to ascertain its tremendous impact on the Jewish communities living in that part of the world, in terms of loss of traditional Jewish identity culminating in many cases in assimilation. Kafka's work will thus firstly be situated in the historical and political context out of which it emerged. / In the course of this work, we have used the concepts of sacre and profane as developed by the historian of religions Mircea Eliade throughout in order to demonstrate that there exists in Kafka's work a constitutive tension articulated between those two poles, not only at the level of the plot, but at the level of language itself. / Since the central element at the root of this tension is expressed in terms of presence and absence, we have also analysed the philosophy of language of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, which are themselves articulated exactly in those terms. / The use of these categories has helped us show that if Kafka's work is indeed at time very close to that of Scholem and Benjamin, especially in its literary rendition of motives underlining the absence of the divine in language, it also distinguishes itself markedly from the work of the two philosophers by the use of other motives which underline the immediate presence of the message of Revelation, made directly accessible within the modern and profane language, which is also that of literature.

This thesis explores the critical question of the ethics of creation as it emerges to the forefront of contemporary thought in the late twentieth century. The question is examined through three independent yet interrelated motifs: the legend of the Golem, the symbol of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and the literature of Franz Kafka. An understanding of these three motifs, in all their implications, can provide valuable commentary and insightful reflections so that a discourse on a possible moral and ethical ground for affirmative creation can be engaged. It is imperative, in light of the destructive potentiality of our creative making, to address this discourse if architecture is to regain cultural relevance.