PD Dr Achim Küpper (Berlin): Franz Kafka and the Canon. On His Work in the Context of Literary, Media and Cultural History From Greek Antiquity to Prague Modernism

The event, part of the „Prague Lectures“ series, will provide an insight into Franz Kafka's work, paying particular attention to his diverse references to the history of literature, media and culture from Greek antiquity to modern Prague. In doing so, he emphasises an aspect that has so far tended to take a back seat in scholarly discussions of the author: in the frequent emphasis on a singular ‘small literature’, based partly on Kafka's own comments and partly on those of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1975), Kafka's relationship to the ‘great literatures’ has often been neglected or even completely overlooked.

So how does Kafka's work relate to the canon? In other words, how does it position itself in relation to the canonical classics of world literature or the milestones of global cultural history - for example via references to the historical archive inherent in the texts themselves - and how can it be categorised in their ranks?

The lecture will present the results of around ten years of work on Kafka, which will also be published in book form in autumn (Franz Kafka. Schrift und Medialität. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik 2024).

Achim Küpper, PhD 2008, habilitation 2020, researches and teaches at the Free University of Berlin. He specialises in the fields of literature, culture and media. Recent book publications (selection):Franz Kafka. Schrift und Medialität. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik 2024, ca. 250 pp. [in print]; Theorie des Nomadischen. Medien – Kultur – Literatur. Freiburg i. Br.: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft im Verlag Herder 2024, ca. 240 pp. [in print]; Signaturen des Nomadischen in der Gegenwart. Das Werk von Christoph Ransmayr im medialen Zusammenhang. Freiburg i. Br.: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft im Verlag Herder 2024, ca. 450 pp. [in print].