126-026 Heinrich von Kleist's Prose Fiction

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Subject Description

Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) was not only one of the greatest dramatists in German literature, but he also wrote a small body of short prose fiction that contain some of the most fascinating and tantalising texts in German. It was no accident that Franz Kafka called Kleist and Dostoyevsky his 'blood relatives', meaning the prose writers who had most influence on him. The world of Kleist's stories is always a text full of obscure implications which the characters struggle to decipher. Family relationships are fraught with latent violence; glimpses of a better world are fleeting or hedged with irony; circumstance and coincidence play an often cruel chess-game with the fictional characters as pieces. Against this underlying grimness are the beauty and power of Kleist's literary technique which has guaranteed that not only scholars enjoy reading his works today. The subject sets out to offer a close reading of Kleist's eight stories in a way that situates them in their historical context and also relates them to paradigms of modern experience.

Assessment

An assignment or classpaper of 1000 words, and written work totalling 4000 words.