Sylabus
The course focuses on modern Jewish authors of Central and Eastern Europe, with a special respect to writers who were active in the Czech lands and Vienna (the reading list includes also relevant works of non-Jewish authors). Following a relative historical chronology, the course-topics cover a changing concept of individual and collective identity before World War I referencing the move from a neo-romantic symbolic conception of a multidimensional world towards the irony of the parable of vanishing meaning in the works of Prague and Viennese writers (A.
Schnitzler, G. Meyrink, P.
Leppin, F. Kafka), possibilities of coexistence and ideological stereotypes as forms of anti-knowledge-"the world of yesterday" and its collapse (S.
Zweig, J. Roth, R.
Musil), expressionistic and psychological-analytical approaches at the situation of breaking-up of European value-systems (H. Ungar, E.
Hostovsky, K. Pola ek, H.
Broch), notions of decline to chaos, fundamental reduction of existence, social determination in contrast to tradition and memory as a resource of understanding the other (J. Langer, B.
Schulz, I. Babel).
The last section is devoted to literary representations of the Holocaust-to factual "non-sujet" writing (J. Weil) focused on "recording" the reality on the one hand, to refined stylization expressing manipulative features of modern reality on the other (L.
Fuks) and to the topic of the deconstruction of personal and collective memory (Henryk Grynberg). All readings contribute to understanding of the changes of modern situation in which Jewish identity represents a specific margin, a limit of the "human condition" of Central Europe and in this sense acquires a universal meaning.
Anotace
This is one of the courses of the CET Academic Programs (Central European Studies and Jewish Studies); the comprehensive information is available at: http://fhs.cuni.cz/FHS-239.html#2.
The course focuses on modern Jewish authors of Central and Eastern Europe, with a special respect to writers who were active in the Czech lands and Vienna (the reading list includes also relevant works of non-Jewish authors).