Kafka, Rilke, and Czech Modernism

FAIN: FA-53557-07

Peter Alfred Zusi
President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)

My book will be a comparative literary study focusing on Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, and the Czech modernist authors Otokar Brezina and Vladislav Vancura. I will argue for a broader conception of literary modernism that incorporates the “peripheral” literatures of East-Central Europe and will explore the implications that these neglected traditions hold for standard accounts of modernism. My claims will be framed by current theoretical debates on transnationalism, multiculturalism, and the canons of modernism.