Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé
Undergraduate major seminar, graduate seminar or lecture course
Kafka, Beckett, Coetzee and the Difficulty of Reality
“A reversal. Lurking, fretful, hoping, the answer creeps around the questions, peers despairingly in its averted face, follows it on its most
abstruse journeys—that is, those that have least to do with the answer.”
Franz Kafka, Zürau Aphorisms
This course examines selected works of three major modern writers, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett
and J.M. Coetzee, exploring their unique brands of literary realism, fantasy, philosophical ethics and
treatments of crises of writing, identity, language, faith, authority and empire.
Required texts (available for purchase and in library reserve):
Franz Kafka, Kafka’s Selected Stories (Norton, Corngold, ed.)
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis (Norton, Corngold, ed.)
Franz Kafka, The Trial (Schocken, Mitchell, ed.)
Samuel Beckett, Molloy
Samuel Beckett, Watt
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot and Endgame
J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
J.M. Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
All other readings will be made available on course website or via email or as photocopies
distributed in class.
Week 1
Introduction
“Von den Gleichnissen” | “On Parables”
“Der Kreisel” | “The Top”
“Kleine Fabel” | “A Little Fable”
“Gibs auf!” | “Give it up!”
David Foster Wallace, “Laughing with Kafka”
Week 2
Selected later stories (* indicates piece collected in Kafka’s Selected Stories, Corngold, ed.)
* “Forschungen eines Hundes” |“Research of a Dog”
*“Der Bau” |“The Burrow”
Stanley Corngold, “Something to Do with the Truth: Kafka’s Later Stories”
J.M. Coetzee, “Kafka: Interview” and “Tense, Time and Aspect in Kafka’s ‘The Burrow,’”
Doubling the Point
Week 3
*Franz Kafka, “Das Urteil” |“The Judgment” (1913)
*“Erstes Leid” |“First Distress”
*“Ein Hungerkünstler” |“A Hunger Artist” (1924)
*“Josephine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse” | Josephine the Singer or the Mouse
Folk”
*Stanley Corngold, “Preface to an Understanding of Kafka” and “In the Circle of the
Judgment”
Walter Sokel, “Perspectives and Truth in ‘The Judgment’”
Recommended: *Nicola Gess, “The Politics of Listening: The Power of Song in Kafka’s
‘Josephine, the Singer’”
James Rolleston, “Purification unto Death: ‘A Hunger Artist’ as Allegory of Modernism”
Week 4
Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung |The Metamorphosis (* indicates piece collected in The
Metamorphosis, Corngold, ed.)
Vladimir Nabokov, “The Metamorphosis”
*Stanley Corngold, “The Metamorphosis: Metamorphosis of the Metaphor”
*Eric Santner, “Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the Writing of Abjection”
Week 5
Franz Kafka, Das Schloss|The Castle
Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka. On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death”
Theodor Adorno, “Notes on Kafka,” Prisms
Of interest: Pericles Lewis, “Franz Kafka and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion”
Week 6
Franz Kafka,
“In der Strafkolonie” |“In the Penal Colony” (1919)
“Ein Bericht für eine Akademie” | “Report to an Academy”
“Schakale und Araber” | “Jackals and Arabs”
“Before the Law”
Jacques Derrida, “Before the Law,” Acts of Literature
Giorgio Agamben, “Form of Law,” Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life
Of interest: Chana Kronfeld, “Introduction,” On the Margins of Modernism
Walter Sokel, “Identity and the Individual, or Past and Present: Franz Kafka’s ‘A Report to
an Academy’ in a Psychoanalytic and a Sociohistorical Context”
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, selections (“Content
and Expression,” “An Exaggerated Oedipus”; “What is a Minor Literature?”)
Week 7
Samuel Beckett, Molloy
Gilbert Yeoh, “J.M. Coetzee and Samuel Beckett: Nothingness, Minimalism and
Indeterminacy”
Gary Adelman, “Beckett and Kafka”
Mark Harman, “At Least He Could Garden: Beckett and Kafka”
First papers due
Week 8
Samuel Beckett, Watt
Charles Bernheimer, “Watt’s in the Castle: The Aporetic Quest in Kafka and Beckett”
Ruby Cohn, “Watt in the Light of the Castle”
Derek Attridge, “Sex, Comedy and Influence: Coetzee’s Beckett”
Nicholas Meihuizen, “Beckett and Coetzee, the Aesthetics of Insularity”
Week 9
Samuel Beckett, En Attendant Godot |Waiting for Godot
J.M. Coetzee, “Samuel Beckett and the Temptations of Style”
J. M. Coetzee, “Eight Ways of Looking at Samuel Beckett”
Week 10
Samuel Beckett, Fin de Partie | Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape
Of interest: J.M. Coetzee, “The Making of Samuel Beckett”
J.M. Coetzee, “Samuel Beckett’s Lessness: An Exercise in Decomposition”
J.M. Coetzee, excepts from Ph.D. dissertation, The English Fiction of Samuel Beckett: An Essay
in Stylistic Analysis
Week 11
J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians
Jorge Luis Borges, “Kafka and his Precursors”
Michael Valdez Moses, “The Mark of Empire: Writing History and Torture in Coetzee’s
Waiting for the Barbarians”
Jane Poyner, “Madness and Civilization in Waiting for the Barbarians”
Bill Ashcroft, “Irony, Allegory and Empire: Waiting for the Barbarians and In the Heart of the
Country
Week 12
J.M. Coetzee, The Life & Times of Michael K
Derek Attridge, Against Allegory: Waiting for the Barbarians and The Life & Times of Michael K
Week 13
J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace
Derek Attridge, “Age of Bronze, State of Grace”
Alice Crary, “J.M. Coetzee, Moral Thinker”
Of interest:
Nadine Gordimer, “The Idea of Gardening”
Adriaan van Heerden, “Disgrace, Desire and the Dark Side of the New South Africa”
Jane Poyner, “Truth and Reconciliation in Disgrace”
Rosemary Jolly, “Going to the Dogs: Humanity in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, The Lives of
Animals and
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission”
Week 14
Week 15
J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
Hugo von Hoffmannsthal, Letter to Lord Chandos
Elizabeth Costello
Derek Attridge, “Epilogue: A Writers Life”
Cora Diamond, “The Difficulty of Philosophy and the Difficulty of Reality”
Stephen Mulhall, from The Wounded Animal
Of interest: Daniel Medin, “J.M. Coetzee: Elizabeth Costello”
Chris Danta, “’Like a dog . . . like a lamb’: Becoming Sacrificial Animal in Kafka and
Coetzee”
Michael Funk Deckard and Ralph Palm, “Irony and Belief in Elizabeth Costello”
Final papers due during exam week
Course Requirements (if the course is offered as a seminar):
• Class participation—including active engagement in seminar discussion, presentations, reading circle
participation and weekly discussion questions and any short exercises I may assign (30%)
• One mid-term paper, approximately 7 pages (30%)
• One final research paper, approximately 10 pages (40%)
Graduate students will be expected to hand in an article-length paper (approx 20 pages) at the end of the term
(though they may choose to hand in two shorter (conference-length or approx 10 pages) papers, or may expand
a shorter mid-term paper into a longer one to be handed in by the end of the semester.
Preparation and participation. The scholarly community we create in this seminar will be a group endeavor. Your
full intellectual presence is a part of the “social contract” tacit amongst all seminar participants. Please complete
the readings and be ready to share your ideas about it – and to listen attentively to the ideas of others. Please
bring your own copies of the reading to seminar. Use of laptops during the class is discouraged; please use
them only (as tends to happen) when necessary.
Weekly Questions. Students will submit at least two questions for class discussion each week as we embark on
each set of assigned texts. Questions you’d like to see discussed, any issues, points of confusion or
interpretation, etc. are to be emailed to me by 7:00 pm on Thursdays before class.
Presentations. Students will each give at least one, (though very possibly two) presentation(s) on course readings
(alone or in pairs) during the course of the semester. Students will also take part in reading circles (see detailed
instructions for presentation/discussion leading and full description of Reading Circle requirements below).
These consist in small groups of students (not presenting on a given text) who will meet together outside of
class before their colleagues’ presentation to discuss points of the text carefully and formulate discussion
questions about it that they will put to the class following their colleagues’ presentation. Reading circle groups
act as the most attentive respondents of their peers’ presentations.
If offered as a lecture course, requirements will be: a midterm exam, final exam and final
paper.
Presentation and Discussion-Leading Guidelines:
Assignment: At least once during the semester, each student will work alone or as a member of a pair (depending on
class size) to prepare a presentation of that day’s course material and lead class discussion of the assigned readings (in
essence, you’ll be getting to teach the class for a brief period).
Expectation: Your responsibilities are twofold: First, you are to put together an organized and cohesive presentation
of your ideas to the class. Your presentation should be thoughtfully provocatively, creatively crafted in such a way that
it engages the class in an active discussion, the leading of which is your second responsibility. Since your presentation is
meant to prompt the class to engage an extended discussion, it may be helpful to conclude your 30 minutes or so with
several questions you’d like to put to the class for general discussion.
Preparation/Execution: The person or pair scheduled to present will come up with an issue, aspect of the text, topic,
argument or interesting angle on or interpretation of the work (or fragment thereof) they are scheduled to present.
Students working in pairs will be graded equally, so it is important that both students participate equally in preparing
the presentation.
Specifics: Before your presentation, those students working in pairs should divide the labor by each choosing different
tasks, interpretive approaches, courses of inquiry or parts of the book, etc. to concentrate on (e.g. one student might
look at the text in question in terms of its historical context while the other concentrates on the relationship between
the primary text and other intertexts and/or ideas. One student might examine philosophical or artistic allusions or tieins while the other offers a close reading of a passage (just to name a few possible examples). Presentations on
secondary readings assigned in class in relation to the primary text at hand are also encouraged. Before the day on
which you are scheduled to present and lead discussion the student-presenter or pair must compose a statement that
offers 1) a list of the different tasks, courses of inquiry, etc. of each of the members; 2. a concise statement of your
arguments, interpretations or whatever lessons, insights or ideas you aim to convey to the class; 3. an outline of the
direction the argument will likely take and the textual examples you’ll likely refer to. This statement is to be sent to
Karen by email by 7:00 pm the evening before the day of your presentation and then turned in hard-copy form on the
day of the presentation itself. These 30 minutes in the spotlight give you a chance to offer new interpretations or
enlightening information about the text, so creativity, as well as scholarship, is encouraged.
TIPS: Some examples of approaches you might take (this is by no means an exhaustive list! Other ideas are welcome;
use your own strengths and interests.):
-Use intertexts (other texts—this includes films, visual art, music, literature, cultural histories, scientific articles, etc, etc
that are in some way related—or which you want to relate—to the text in question), source texts (those which
influenced the work in question or are alluded to within it) or historical background material to shed light on the text
you’re dealing with.
-Make relevant use of visual art, film or music and critical, literary and film theory to present new ways of looking at
your text.
Other components may include critical reception of the work, specific notable features of the work such as narration
style, stylistic innovation, relationship to other art forms (visual, plastic arts, architecture, film, music, etc). You may
also choose to do a close reading of a passage as a component. You may choose more interactive modes of presenting
(organizing class involvement, debates, enactments, etc).
The presentations and subsequent discussion-leading will be graded on a check/check-plus/check-minus basis.
If you need technological support, you must let me know at least a day in advance.
Reading Circle Respondents:
As each group prepares to present and lead class discussion, the reading circle pair or group responsible for the text in
question must also meet outside of class to discuss the assigned material. During reading-circle group meetings, please
have someone take minutes. These minutes should include a run-down of who attended the circle meeting and some of
the major questions posed and observations discussed, including general reactions to the work, things you found
interesting, what was remarkable or lacking in the text or secondary literature, etc. The second group should also
submit questions (one per member) to the presenters via email for general class discussion. These minutes and
discussion questions should be typed and emailed to Karen by 9:00 pm the day before the student discussion
leading/presentation takes place. Please plan your meetings well in advance of the class discussion of the text to avoid
difficulties scheduling meetings the night before.
The reading circle group should be among the most attentive and vocal members of the class on days on which student
presentations are scheduled.
Accommodations for students with disabilities
Students needing academic adjustments or accommodations because of a disability documented in a letter from the
Accessible Education Office (AEO) should speak with me confidentially by the end of the second week of the term to
discuss appropriate implementation of course or room adjustments.
For Harvard’s stance on academic integrity in Papers and Other Written Assignments, please visit the FAS link below:
http://webdocs.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/faculty_handbook/current/chapter3/PapersOther.html