UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

COL 5037S SLA 445S/ 1038 H
MAGIC PRAGUE:
Questions of Literary Cityscapes

This course is not offered in 2006-2007

INSTRUCTOR: Veronika Ambros
phone : 926 1300, ext. 3200
email:veronika.ambros@utoronto.ca
121 St. Joseph Street
Alumni Hall, #405

Prague as a meeting point of different cultures attracted a variety of artists and scholars. The book by the Italian literary scholar Angelo Ripellino Magic Prague, inspired this class, which explores the myth of Prague in selected works by Jan Neruda, Franz Kafka, R.M. Rilke, G. Meyrink, G. Apollinaire, B. Hrabal, M.Kundera and others. A number of secondary texts will help to discuss questions of literary cityscapes, of centre and margin, of multiculturalism and nationalism in different genres.

Readings in English and for the specialists in the original.

Requirements:

Graduate Students:Attendance and participation (10%),a book report (ca. 5 pages; 20%), a presentation (15 min - 20%), and paper on a topic from the class consulted with the instructor (20 pages - 40 %).

Undergraduates: Attendance and participation (20%), a book report (ca. 3 pages; 20%), a presentation (15 min, or 5 pages - 20%), and paper on a topic from the class consulted with the instructor (10 pages - 40 %).

Preliminary Program
1.Introduction

2. Jan Neruda Prague Tales – Povídky malostranské
Simmel, Georg, “The Metropolis and the Mental Life” In: The Blackwell City Reader. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson eds. Malden, Oxford, Melbourne: Blackwell, 2002, 11.
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1961.3-10.
Ellul, Jacques “The History of the City” The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids Mich: Eerdmans, 1970: 148-163

3. Rainer Maria Rilke “King Bohusch”
Klaus Wagenbach. “Prague at the turn of the Century” in Anderson, Mark (ed.). Reading Kafka. Prague, Politics and the Fin de Siècle. New York: Schocken, 1989: 25-53.

4.Guillaume Apollinaire “The Wandering Jew”, “Zone” Seifert “Sinful City”
Suggested reading: Seifert Morový sloup (The Plague column)
Johnston, John H. The Poet and the City. A Study in Urban Perspectives. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984:3-15.
French Alfred. The Poets of Prague: Czech Poetry between the Wars. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

5.Gustav Meyrink Der Golem or Walpurgisnacht
Stern, J.P. “On Prague German Literature” The Heart of Europe. Essays on Literature and Ideology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992: 61-77.
Gelley, Alexander. “City Texts: Representation, Semiology, Urbanism.” In Politics, Theory and Contemporary Culture. New York: Columbia UP, 1993:237-259.

6. Franz Kafka “Description of a Struggle” – “Beschreibung eines Kampfes”

Christoph Stölzl “Kafka: Jew, Anti-Semite, Zionist”; cf. Anderson after Wagenbach
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari ”What is a Minor Literature?” “Diary in Anderson, Mark (ed.). Reading Kafka. Prague, Politics and the Fin de Siècle. New York: Schocken, 1989: 53-79; 80-94; 259-262.
Kundera “Somewhere Behind”, 1988: 99-117.

7. Franz Kafka The Trial – Der Prozeß Bakhtin, „Chronotope“

8.Jaroslav Hašek The Fortunes of the Good Soldier Švejk, part I
Marc Blanchard In Search of the City Stanford, Anma, 1985, 3-31

9. Karel Čapek “The Poet”, The Experiment of Professor Rous”
Suggested reading: Tales from Two Pockets - Povídky z první a druhé kapsy
Dougherty, James. “The City at the Center of the World” The Fivesquare City. The City in Religious Imagination. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980: 1-22.

10. Jiří Weil Mendelssohn is on the Roof. Wirth-Nesher, Hana. City Codes. Reading the Modern Urban Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996: 1-25.

11. Jorge Luis Borges “The Secret Miracle”, “The Golem,” Nazim Hikmet “Faust’s House, Prague Dawn, Optimistic Prague, Conversation with the dead Nezval”
Suggested reading: Labyrinths
Hans-Georg Ruprecht. “ An Improbable Side by Side: Doležel and Borges in Prague.” In Fiction Updated. Colin-Andrei Calinescu and Walid Hamarneh (eds.) Toronto,UofTPress, 1996, 293-302.
Roland Barthes “Semiology and Urbanism” In. RB The Semiotic Challenge.New York: Hill and Wang, 1988:191-201

12. Bohumil Hrabal To Loud a Solitude
Barta, Peter I. Bely, Joyce And Döblin: Peripateties In the City Novel. Gainesville, Fl.: University of Florida Press, 1996: 1-17.

13.Jáchym Topol The Trip to the Railway Station , Daniela Hodrová I see a city
Jeri Johnson, “Literary Geography: Joyce, Woolf and the City.“ In: The Blackwell city reader. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson eds. Malden, Oxford, Melbourne: Blackwell, 2002, 61-71.
Anke Gleber “Female Flanerie and the Symphony of the City. In Women in the Metropolis Katharina von Ankum ed. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997, pp.67-88

Selected Bibliography

Anderson, Mark (ed.). Reading Kafka. Prague, Politics and the Fin de Siècle. New York: Schocken, 1989.
Baak, van J.J. The Place of Space in Narration. Amsterdam: Rodoph, 1983.
Bachelard, Gaston. Etienne Gilson (foreword) The Poetics of Space..Boston: Beacon Press,1964 <1958>
Barta, Peter I. Bely, Joyce And Döblin: Peripateties In the City Novel. Gainesville, Fl.: University of Florida Press, 1996.
Barthes, Roland „Semiology and Urbanism“ in The Semiotic Challenge. Richard Howard (trans.) New York: Hill and Wang, 1988 <1985>: 191-201.
Becker, Sabina. Urbanität und Moderne. Studien zur Großstadtwahrnehmung in der deutschen Literatur 1900 – 1930. St. Ingbert: Röhrig, 1993.
Benjamin, Walter. „Paris, die Hauptstadt des XIX Jahrhunderts“Illuminationen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977: 170-184.
Becker, Veronika. Das emotionale Moment der Veränderung. Stadt als Dichtung. Bonn: Bouvier, 1999.
Brodsky, Boris “The Psychology of Urban Design in the 1920’s and 1930’s,” The Journal of Decoration and Propaganda Art, 1987, no 5:81
Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. London: Picador, 1979.
*Demetz, Peter. Prague in Black and Gold. Scenes from the Life of a European City. New York: Hill and Wang, 1997.
---. René Rilkes Prager Jahre. Düsseldorf: Diedrichs,1953. PT 2635I65Z663
Dougherty, James. The Fivesquare City. The City in Religious Imagination. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980.
Doležel, Lubomír. Narrative Modes in Czech Literature. Toronto: University of Toronto, 1973.
Ellul, Jacques The Meaning of the City. Grand Rapids Mich: Eerdmans, 1970.
*French Alfred. Czech writer and politics 1945-1969. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1982.
*---. The Poets of Prague: Czech Poetry between the Wars. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
Gelley, Alexander. “City Texts: Representation, Semiology, Urbanism.” In Politics, Theory and Contemporary Culture. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.
Gleber, Anke “Female Flanerie and the Symphony of the City. In Women in the Metropolis Katharina von Ankum ed. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997, 67-88
Gottdiener, M. and Alexandros PH. Lagopulos, eds. The City and the Sign. An Introduction to Urban Semiotics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Hauser, Susanne. Der Blick auf die Stadt. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1990.
Johnston, John H. The Poet and the City. A Study in Urban Perspectives. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1984.
Karl, Frederick. Franz Kafka. New York: Fromm, 1993.
Klotz, -Volker. Die erzählte Stadt: Ein Sujet als Herausforderung des Romans von Lesage bis Döblin. München: Hauser, 1969.
Kosík, Karel. “Hašek and Kafka, or, the World of the Grotesque”in The Crisis of Modernity. Essays and Observations From the 1968 Era. James H. Satterwhite, ed.. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995: 77- 86.
Kundera, Milan. The Art of the Novel. New York: Harper&Row, 1988
---. Testaments Betrayed. New York: Harper&Row, 1995.
Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason. A Life of Franz Kafka. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984.
*Ripellino, Angelo Mario. Magic Prague. Trans. David Newton Marinelli. Ed. M.H.Heim. Berkeley: U of California P, 1994.
*Sayer, Derek. The Coasts of Bohemia. A Czech History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
Shapiro, Michael J. Reading the Postmodern Polity: Political Theory as Textual Practice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Spargo, Tamsin. (ed.) Reading the Past. Literature and History. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2000.
Spector, Scott. Prague Territories. National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle. Berkeley University of California Press, 2000.
Squier, Susan Merill. Women Writers and the City. Knoxwille: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.
Stern, J.P. The Heart of Europe. Essays on Literature and Ideology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Wechsberg, Joseph. Prague. The Mystical City. New York: Macmillan, 1971.
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Wilson, Paul, Prague, 1995
Wirth-Nesher, Hana. City Codes. Reading the Modern Urban Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996
Zacharasiewicz, Waldemar. Images of Central Europe in Travelogues and Fiction by North American Writers. Tübingen: Stauffenberg Verlag, 1995.