Franz Kafka, New Edition »

One of our most popular, respected, and controversial literary critics, Yale University professor Harold Bloom s books about, variously, Shakespeare, the Bible, and the classic literature are as erudite as they are accessible.

With empathy for the absurd and an intimate understanding of human frustration, Franz Kafka has produced a body of work that offers an intriguing mix of paradox and parable. In this new collection of full-length essays, Harold Bloom and other noted literary critics discuss Kafka's most celebrated novels, including The Castle, The Trial, and the Czech author's seminal work, The Metamorphosis.

The Bloom's Modern Critical Views series presents critical portraits of the writers that are most widely read and studied in high schools and colleges. Each volume opens with an introductory essay by Harold Bloom in which he offers his insights into the author's work and an editor's note that comments on the individual analyses that follow. Also included are bibliographic references, notes on the various contributors, and a useful chronology of the writer's life. Bloom's Modern Critical Views is a critical presentation of those men and women who, from ancient times to the present, have shaped the Western literary tradition.

Editor's Note vii

Introduction Harold Bloom 1

Kafka's Narrative: A Matter of Form Anthony Thorlby 23

Kafka and Modernism Walter H. Sokel 37

The Text That Was Never a Story: Symmetry and Disaster in "A Country Doctor" Henry Sussman 53

The Impossibility of Crows Stephen D. Dowden 65

Franz Kafka: Wrenching Scripture Robert Alter 89

Allotria and Excreta in "In the Penal Colony" Stanley Corngold 105

Tradition and Betrayal in "Das Urteil" Russell A. Berman 121

Kafka Imagines His Readers: The Rhetoric of "Josefine die S?ngerin" and"Der Bau" Clayton Koelb 135

Kafka's Antitheatrical Gestures Martin Puchner 149

Kafka Patrick Reilly 171

Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung: Transformation, Metaphor, and the Perils of Assimilation Simon Ryan 197

Chronology 217

Contributors 219

Bibliography 223

Acknowledgments 227

Index 229