Schedule for Discussions - Kafka Stories 2014

[Jim]

This is our planned reading and discussion schedule for short stories by Franz Kafka. The seventeen stories listed below represent the bulk of his longer stories and can be found in The Complete Short Stories, published by Vintage, 2005. Kafka’s work is in the public domain, and so free versions should be readily available for ereaders.

We will read The Metamorphosis in Week Seventeen, and will then read two additional tales of metamorphosis, The Breast, by Philip Roth in Week Eighteen, and Pig Tales, by Marie Darrieussecq in Week Nineteen, at which time we can have a compare and contrast conversation about these three tales of metamorphosis, as well as those by Ovid and Apuleius.

Week One – February 3, 2014 – Description of a Struggle

Week Two – February 17, 2014 – Wedding Preparations in the Country

Week Three – March 3, 2014 – The Judgment

Week Four – March 17, 2014 – In the Penal Colony

Week Five – March 31, 2014 – The Village Schoolmaster [The Giant Mole]

Week Six – April 14, 2014 – Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor

Week Seven – April 28, 2014 – The Warden of the Tomb

Week Eight – May 12, 2014 – A Country Doctor

Week Nine – May 26, 2014 – The Great Wall of China

Week Ten – June 9, 2014 – A Report to an Academy

Week Eleven – June 23, 2014 – The Refusal

Week Twelve – July 7, 2014 – A Hunger Artist

Week Thirteen – July 21, 2014 – Investigations of a Dog

Week Fourteen – August 4, 2014 – A Little Woman

Week Fifteen – August 18, 2014 – The Burrow

Week Sixteen – September 1, 2014 – Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk

Week Seventeen – September 15, 2014 – The Metamorphosis

Week Eighteen – September 29, 2014 – The Breast, by Philip Roth

Week Nineteen – October 13, 2014 – Pig Tales, by Marie Darrieussecq