Rather than posit a break between these two personae, Anderson charts the historical continuities between the young Kafka and the author of "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial". The book demonstrates how clothing functions as a semi-private code of meaning in his literary works and the extent to which the aestheticist notion of "becoming" the work of art haunts Kafka's conception of writing throughout his life. The result is a startlingly unconventional portrait of Kafka and Prague at the turn of the century, involving such issues as Jugendstil aesthetics, Otto Weininger's "egoless" woman, the Viennese critique of architectural ornament, the clothing-reform movement, anti-Semitism and the question of Jewish-German writing.
- ISBN10 0198151624
- ISBN13 9780198151623
- Publish Date 1 July 1992
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 16 September 2002
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 244
- Language English