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Reading
Prague: The City as a Metaphor of Human Existence
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(The Semiotics of the Image of Prague in Literature, Arts, Mass Culture, and Media)
THREE HOURS PER WEEK
The course is designed on the inter-disciplinary pattern that should incorporate the metamorphoses of the image of Prague through different decades as well as through the distinct media that this image has been articulated. The core of the course will be based on interpretation of the image of Prague in the 19th and 20th century and Czech, German, and Jewish literatures. The relations between the image of Prague and the issues of identity in fiction (national, local, social, religious, personal) are also examined. To offer a broader point of view, the study of the presentation and representation of Prague in painting, film, photography, music, videos, postcards, and commercials will accompany the interpretation of the images of Prague in literature. Some sociological as well as architectural and urban studies phenomena (e. g. symbolic semiotics of the cemeteries, cultural monuments, and places connected with literature and arts) will also be addressed. Several walks through Prague and field trips guided by the instructor of the course are incorporated into the design of the class.
Reading: 200 - 250 pages per week.
Writing: Mid-Term Paper (6 - 8 pages) and Final Paper (8 - 10 pages)
Grading: Attendance and active class participation (30%), Mid-Term paper (30%), Final paper (40%).
Introduction:
The Semiotics of a City and the Semiotics of the Image of a City in Literature
SUGGESTED READING:
Peter Preston and Paul Simpson-Housley: Writing the City. In: Writing
the City. Eden, Babylon, and New Jerusalem (ed. by Peter Preston and Paul
Simpson-Housley). London, New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 1-14
Building Up and Re-Shaping of the Memory: The Past and Its Incorporation into the Present of Prague (Vertical Point of View: Monuments, Towers, Hills, Basements)
REQUIRED READING:
Alois Jirasek: (from) Old Czech Legends
Trip to Vysehrad and Olsany Cemeteries
The City as a Closed Space: Xenophobia as a Natural Aspect of the 19th Century Identification (Horizontal Point of View: Walls, Gates, Borders)
REQUIRED READING:
Jan Neruda: How Mr. Vorel Broke In His Meerschaum
Gustav Meyrink: GM
Franz Kafka: An Old Manuscript
SUGGESTED READING:
Burton Pike: The City as Image. In his: The Image of the City in Modern
Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 3-26
Movie The Rat Catcher, dir. by Jiri Barta
Week
4
Personification of the City as the First Step to Its Modernist Perception
REQUIRED READING:
Paul Leppin: Severin's Journey into the Dark Paul Leppin: Other's Paradise
SUGGESTED READING:
Peter I. Barta: The Emergence of the Modernist City Novel and Its Peripatetic
Hero. In his: Bely, Joyce, and Doblin. Peripatetics in the City Novel.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996, p. 1-18
Old City Center as a Labyrinth and as a Keeper of Truth
REQUIRED READING
Comenius: (from) The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart
Gustav Meyrink: The Golem
SUGGESTED READING:
Milada Vilimkova: The Prague Ghetto. Prague, 1993, p. 81-102
Emptification of the City as a Reflection of Loosing One's Identity: From Joseph K., the banker, to the Current Realm of Banks in the Center of Prague
REQUIRED READING:
Franz Kafka: The Trial
SUGGESTED READING:
Angelo Maria Ripellino: Magic Prague, esp. Part One A walk through Kafka's
and Meyrink's Prague
Week
8
Modern City as a Utopian Nightmare: Radical Change and Erasure and Their Impact Upon the Image of Prague
REQUIRED READING:
Franz Kafka: (from) The Castle and (from) America
A walk to former Stalin's Monument
Alientation, Dezintegration, and Integration as Behavior Models for Living in a City
REQUIRED READING:
Franz Kafka: Description of a Struggle
Karel Capek: The Footprint, Footprints
Week
10
From Kafka's World to Holocaust, from Being Lost in a City to Being Caught in a City
REQUIRED READING:
Jiri Weil: Life with a Star
Vertical Hierarchization of a City Under Communist Regime: In-Between of a Hidden World of a Basement and the Underworld
REQUIRED READING:
Bohumil Hrabal: Too Loud a Solitude
Horizontal Division of the Totalitarian World: The Center and the Periphery
REQUIRED READING:
Ludvik Vaculík: The Guinea Pigs
Mediating Prague for Western Audience: From Kafka's Prague to Kafka on a T-Shirt
REQUIRED READING:
Milan Kundera: The Unbearable Lightness of Being The movie version of
the novel
Postmodern Prague and Its Polyphonic Image
REQUIRED READING:
Jachym Topol: Angel
Movie The Stone Bridge
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