Kafka's Narrators A Study of His Stories and Sketches

When Roy Pascal died in 1980 he had all but completed a book on narrative viewpoint in Kafka's shorter fiction: the stories and sketches, as well as the numerous fables and parables. It was for Pascal a genuine voyage of discovery from which he believed he was bringing back significant observations that would contribute to a richer and more accurate assessment of Kafka's art. Prepared for publication by professors Martin Swales and Siegbert Prawer, the book was originally published in 1982 in the confident expectation that it had achieved the author's aim. Although it contains detailed analyses of individual works, the book is more than simply one further addition to the bewildering corpus of secondary literature on Kafka. For it is a study which manages to cut through many previous critical controversies by paying scrupulous attention to matters of literary and stylistic technique.

Introduction: narrator and story; 1. The Kafka story: structure and meaning; 2. The impersonal narrator of the early tales: 'The judgement' ('Das Urteil'), 'The metamorphosis' ('Die Verwandlung'); 3. Officer versus traveller: 'In the penal colony' ('In der Strafkolonie'); 4. The breakdown of the impersonal narrator: 'Blumfeld, an elderly bachelor' ('Blumfeld, ein älterer Junggeselle'); 5. The identifiable narrator of 'A hunger artist' ('Ein Hungerkünstler'); 6. Third-person and first-person fables and parables; 7. Last tales: the stories with human characters; 8. Last tales: the animal stories; Epilogue; Notes; Index.

Prepared for publication by Martin Swales and Siegbert Prawer after Roy Pascal's death, this book is more than simply one further addition to the bewildering corpus of secondary literature on Kafka. For it is a study which cuts through previous critical controversies by focusing on matters of literary and stylistic technique.