The Snowy Desert in Kafka’s ‘A Country Doctor’ and Other Non-Places in Modernity

Bidragets oversatte titel: Sneørkenen i Kafkas 'En landlæge' og andre ikke-steder i moderniteten

    Publikation: Bidrag til bog/antologi/rapport/konference proceedingBidrag til bog/antologiForskningpeer review

    Abstract

    The article discusses Marc Augé’s reservation of the concept of non-places to supermodernity in his seminal work Non-Places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. This could imply a striking underestimation of the importance of non-places in modernity and modernism, furthered by a simplified dichotomy between hypermodernity and modernity. Unfolding a number of counter-images, examples of non-places in modernity and modernism, the article focuses on the desert as an important metaphorical non-place. Special attention being given to this (un)topos in the late Kafka and most particularly to a comprehensive reading of “A Country Doctor” (“Ein Landarzt”) in a historical and literary context, the article also points out striking examples of the desert as a non-place in modernity in e.g. Goethe, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Spengler and T. S. Eliot.
    Bidragets oversatte titelSneørkenen i Kafkas 'En landlæge' og andre ikke-steder i moderniteten
    OriginalsprogEngelsk
    TitelNon-Place : Representing Placelessness in Literature, Media and Culture
    RedaktørerMirjam Gebauer, Helle Thorsøe Nielsen, Jan Schlosser, Bent Sørensen
    Antal sider32
    Vol/bind7
    UdgivelsesstedAalborg
    ForlagAalborg Universitetsforlag
    Publikationsdato2015
    Sider353-384
    ISBN (Trykt)978-87-7112-217-6
    StatusUdgivet - 2015
    NavnInterdisciplinære kulturstudier
    ISSN1904-898X

    Emneord

    • Non-place. Kafka. World literature

    Citationsformater