Grisel y Mirabella was written by Juan de Flores between 1480 and 1485. It is a sentimental romance that tells of violation of norms, breach of faith, and loss of royal authority. The action takes place in a society whose social and political order is threatened, as conflicts between different ways of thinking lead to an escalation of violence. Juan de Flores focuses on traditional punishment rituals and methods of torture which appear in both the sentimental romances and the medieval legends of the saints.

The story of Grisel y Mirabella can stand as an example: a king of Scotland has his daughter Mirabella held captive in a remote place to prevent her from marrying below her station. Despite all his precautions, two knights—friends of one another—succeed in finding her place of concealment, and within a short time, a conflict breaks out between them as to which of the two may seek the favors of the princess. All attempts to resolve this dilemma amicably fail and the two men end by fighting a duel, in the course of which one of them, Grisel, kills his rival with his sword. A short time later, Grisel and Mirabella declare their love for each other, which they try in vain to conceal from the king. Under the law of the land, whichever of these two bears the lesser blame for this offence will be punished by banishment from the kingdom, while the other will suffer death by fire. But even under torture, neither Grisel nor Mirabella will confess. Instead, they dare to criticize publicly the closed, providential world model which the king so vehemently champions. The latter is all the more incensed as Mirabella is the only one who could have assured the continuation of a genealogical dynasty.

The king imposes a ban of silence on Mirabella and Grisel and decides to make their fate dependent on a dispute between Braçayda (a misandrist) and Torrellas (a misogynist). However, this verbal joust at some courtly feast or tournament becomes virtually a farce. The twelve judges decide clearly in Torrellas's favor, and their verdict is announced to the public by the symbolic gesture of raised swords, whose hilts are apple-shaped and dripping with blood, i.e., suggesting the original Fall of Man. In making their decision known by this gesture, the judges ignore fundamental rules of judicial process by belittling the importance of verbal procedure.

Childeric II was assassinated, but he refused to die. While the seventh-c. noblemen who murdered him no doubt thought that they had rid the Frankish kingdom of this Merovingian monarch, the collective memory of their act came back, eight centuries later, to trouble historians in Valois France. On the one hand, in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, royalist historical propaganda held that the French past had been free of regicide. On the other, Childeric II, whom modern scholars qualify as a Frankish king of Austrasia (662–75) and Neustria (673–75), but whom medieval French historians anachronistically regarded as a French king of France, had in fact been assassinated in 675. What is more revealing, in an account written well before the absence of regicide in French history had become an ideological necessity, the Grandes Chroniques de France, the official history on which most late-medieval French historians based their own, reported that he had been murdered. Apparently caught between a contemporary propaganda campaign that denied the fact of regicide in the French past and an authoritative history that narrated the murder of a French king, the authors of latemedieval histories of France had to decide what to tell their readers about the life and death of Childeric II. In order to observe this struggle between ideology and history, to document its results, and to comment on its significance for our understanding of late-medieval French historical culture, I examined the accounts of his reign contained in twenty-three histories of France written between 1380 and 1515.

The authors of these chronicles all lived during or shortly after the Hundred Years’ War, the conflict in the context of which the supposed absence of regicide in French history became an important plank in French historical propaganda. Seeking to secure the political loyalty of the French and to harness national sentiment for the royalist cause, the Valois monarchy's propagandists formulated a series of historically-based comparisons for the purpose of enhancing the prestige of the French crown and tarnishing that of the English rival. These propagandists contrasted the unbroken dynastic continuity that they held to have characterized the history of the French royal family with the dynastic discontinuity that, they asserted, was a hallmark of English history.

La fille du comte de Pontieu, one of the first French novellas, recounts the plight of a woman who is raped by bandits in the presence of her husband. Dating from the thirteenth century and later revised in the fifteenth, La fille du comte de Pontieu raises some important questions both about how the story of rape has (or has not) been told and about the problematic use of rape as subject matter for novellas, stories intended to entertain their readers. This article will examine the novelists’ representation of rape in the two versions of the tale.

The topic of this essay—reinterpreting rape—is not without its own risks, many of which are detailed in a recent study by Evelyn Birge Vitz, “Rereading Rape in Medieval Literature: Literary, Historical, and Theoretical Reflections.” Vitz criticizes the approach some contemporary scholars have taken toward the theme of rape in medieval literature:

She goes on to describe and condemn what she sees as the three principal flaws of this “scholarly trend.” First, according to her, such scholarship “demands that rape be treated straightforwardly and realistically” (1) and therefore “ignores fundamental aspects of medieval esthetics” (3), i.e., medieval authors’ attempts to create a distance from reality by technical and other devices. Secondly, she complains about scholars who deny the possibility that both men and women in the Middle Ages might have found rape scenes entertaining or even, perhaps, titillating. Finally, Vitz says that much recent scholarship argues on the one hand that rape is easy to define and, on the other, that “virtually everything—every act by which a male dominates or ‘possesses’ a woman, erotically or even in other ways—is ultimately an act of rape: all is sexual power play” (18).

In light of Vitz's cautionary remarks, a comparison of La fille du comte de Pontieu's two principal versions becomes all the more interesting. To begin with, the two narratives (from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries) represent rape in dramatically different ways. Indeed, the fifteenth-c. version treats rape quite “straightforwardly and realistically,” to use Vitz's terms, whereas the thirteenth-c. text has other (more esoteric?) concerns: God's mysterious ways.

According to Christiane Raynaud, an expert on medieval justice, French law had reached a certain degree of sophistication by the early fourteenth century. Judicial duels were suppressed by the king, after convictions some appeals were possible, and proof was established by enquête. Still, because law was an amalgamation of revived Roman law, influences of canon law, and a great deal of customary laws, violence persisted. The best collection of customary laws was by Philippe de Rémi, sire de Beaumanoir, c.1283. Municipal courts were established, as the town population and its trading activities grew; the legal ‘system’ of town and country was neither feudal, Roman, nor customary, really. Slowly, the king's role as lawmaker and proper legal authority for appeals developed. In this study we show how violence influenced late-medieval life and justice; however, general aggressiveness ultimately assured the perennial existence of certain groups. If we describe the situation of France in this essay, we can assume that circumstances were similar (if not the same) in other European countries.

Royal Justice and Violence

In the late Middle Ages, royalty prided itself on its judicial institutions, sometimes in order to conceal arbitrariness and denial of justice; in reality, royal justice appears to have been severe and cruel. Often, the executive branch even cut into Church jurisdiction. On the other hand, the development of trials in the registers of the Parisian parliament reveals, for example, that legal procedures frequently ended in letters of remission. In these cases the preliminary investigation had hardly begun, when remission was granted. Certain sources yield little evidence of executions: the texts of chronicles were often silent on this point. The images in chronicles show the rituality and technicality of an execution, as well as the attitudes of persons present; the excess of violence noticeable herein contributed to the showiness of the punishment. Valuable sources are the Fleurs des Chroniques (fourteenth century) and the Grandes Chroniques de France (1274–sixteenth century), although the person who commissioned the images, the author of the text, the copyist, or the miniaturist may have added certain touches—or omitted essential detail.

By comparison, there are fewer miniatures extant on justice than there are on wars. Imaging trials, the illuminations show mostly the moment of accusation (fig. 1), the sentence, and its execution (fig. 2); demonstration of proof and defense did not even appear in the texts of the proceedings.

An investigation of the spread of perceptions and prejudices should examine in particular, how Christians in the later Middle Ages thought Jews thought of Christians. That is, how did Christians expect Jews to interact with them? Each person's interactions with another are colored by numerous pre-formed opinions: expectations about the other person's intentions and character are often associated with larger sets of identifications given that person or group, and often these expectations are based upon perceived, and sometimes actual, power relationships. Thus, members of different ethnic and religious groups, such as Christians and Jews, have expectations or prejudices—at times violent ones—concerning how the other views him/herself.

What is described in the following are the pre-formed opinions which many Christians held toward Jews in the later Middle Ages, as found in German plays written for performance on a stage in front of an audience. The Christian authors of these plays placed words into the mouths of the Jewish characters which were to reflect both alleged Jewish opinions of and threats of violence against Christians; it is often not the Jews themselves, who speak in these plays, but rather Christians representing expected Jewish beliefs. There is an inherent violence in having these opinions thrust upon a minority group by the majority, isolating the minority culturally and emotionally, as we shall see; at the same time, the violence expressed in such statements awakens deep-rooted fears in the audience. In fact, threats of physical violence occur later in the secular plays. In what perhaps should have been the slogan for the current study, Hans Folz's (Christian) Doctor addresses the Rabbi in Die alt und neu ee (The Old and New Covenant): “Then tell me one more thing, Jew! / What do you think of us Christians?”

Literature serving to isolate minority groups is by no means new: much has been written in the last twenty years about the anti-Jewish stance of late-medieval Christian drama, especially German plays. In general, this modern research has focussed upon the negative image of the Jews as being “broadcast” through an early mass-medium.

This special edition of Fifteenth-Century Studies expands upon previous anthologies concentrating on violence in late-medieval and early renaissance Europe in that it includes an unprecedented array of studies, each of which is the product of a distinct discipline and methodology. Unlike Violence and Civil Order in Italian Cities 1200–1500 (ed. Lauro Martines [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972]), a collection of twelve closely-related articles by historians of pre-modern Italy, the present publication provides scholars with seventeen essays which examine the fundamental nature of violence, present its various manifestations, and explore wide-ranging perceptions of this brutal phenomenon in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Most articles appear in English, but some are in German and one in French; whereas the majority address late-medieval phenomena, a few focus primarily on early renaissance issues. The essays offer diverse glimpses into subjects which have gone unexplored hitherto and therefore remained little-known: this compilation of articles widens, adjusts, and clarifies our view of the period, representing also the pluralistic character of today's scholarship. In so doing, the contributions build upon such monographs as Robert Muchembled's La Violence au village: sociabilité et comportements populaires en Artois du XVe au XVIIe siècle (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989), Christiane Raynaud's La Violence au moyen âge XIIIe–XVe siècle, d’après les livres d’histoire en français (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1990), David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), Jody Enders's The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), and Michael Papio's Keen and Violent Remedies: Social Satire and the Grotesque in Masuccio Salernitano's “Novellino” (New York: Peter Lang, 2000).

While the most researched society and culture in the present anthology seems to be that of late-medieval France, the articles discussing violence within this region introduce a broad spectrum spanning royal and public justice, historical culture, religious and secular literature, royal and courtly illuminations, theater and music. These essays addressing France examine not only such texts as the Mystères de la Passion and the Passion Isabeau, but also the earliest extant version of Valentin et Orson, and La fille du comte de Pontieu, and such images as Jean Fouquet's Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia, miniatures from the Chroniques de Froissart commissioned by Louis de Gruuthuse, from Les Fleurs des Chroniques, and the Grandes Chroniques de France.

On the European passion stages of the late Middle Ages, Lazarus's report from hell, an apocryphal story, was undoubtedly meaningful for theatergoers, who were constantly enlarging their own geographical universe and, hence, would have been interested in hearing an explicit description of the netherworld by someone who had been resurrected miraculously. For spectators led to visualize tortures and unhappiness, Lazarus's report (paralleled later by Christ's own suffering) made Jesus’ death and the redemption of the damned souls urgent; to avoid these punishments meted out for a life of sin, Christians would try anything within their spiritual and material means to choose good over evil. Certainly, fifteenth-c. people knew and related to the scenes of torture: judicial torture had been used since antiquity and would outlast the late Middle Ages. In addition, people suffered wartime violence, nature-inflicted havoc unleashed by the weather, and many forms of physical abuse during their daily lives. As we shall see, Lazarus speaks of hellish conditions which resemble contemporary life experiences similarly fraught with violence.

The Lazarus episode raises significant questions about the origin and development of medieval religious drama. Despite a considerable amount of scholarship in the last eighty years, the development of the religious stage is still unclear. Editors of French passion plays and mysteries have added their insights to those of other literary critics who have taken positions on sources and influences; but many scholars affirm, at the same time, that these assertions remain tentative at least until better evidence is established. Our information concerns French theater, but many general points may be valid for other regions as well.

At this moment, some principles can be articulated, with which most critics would agree: 1) All extant passions and most mystères adhere to a basic biblical plot. 2) Most plays add to this plot, with many increases (such as Lazarus's report) occurring in the fifteenth century. 3) Medieval authors of such dramatic works do not necessarily copy from one another, since each writer or fatiste is separated from the next in space and time; also, these works quickly become public property and are changed in the hands of producers to suit local requirements and possibilities of staging; thus, a dramatist writing fifty years after his predecessor may have a livret version in front of him which had changed considerably since its genesis.

Beim Stichwort “Hexerei” oder “Zauberei” fällt den meisten Leuten gegenwärtig —unabhängig vom jeweiligen Alter!—wohl der Name Harry Potter ein. Die Abenteuer des bebrillten Jungen, Schüler eines Zauberinternats, werden verschlungen, das Erscheinen eines neuen Bandes mit mitternächtlichen Ver-kaufsveranstaltungen gefeiert, Pressefotos von übermüdeten kleinen Hexen und Zauberern, aus verknitterten Kostümen siegessicher ob des eroberten Lesestoffes blickend, gehen um die Welt und machen die, die auf Übersetzungen in die eigene Sprache warten müssen, hemmungslos neidisch.

In medizinischen Ratgebersendungen wird Experten die Frage gestellt, was denn gegen hartnäckige Warzenerkrankungen wirklich helfen könnte. Im Zuge der Diskussion äußerst unterschiedlicher Therapiemöglichkeiten kommt schließlich unweigerlich die Rede auf das sogenannte “Besprechen,” eine zumeist von älteren Frauen in ländlichen Gegenden unter etwas dubios anmutenden Umständen durchgeführte Behandlung, die jedoch, glaubt man den Betroffenen, nach langer Zeit endlich den gewünschten Erfolg gebracht hat, nämlich die Heilung, die die Schulmedizin nicht leisten konnte. Bezuggenommen wird dann meist auf den psychosomatischen Aspekt eines solchen Leidens, kurz gefaßt kann dagegen so ziemlich alles helfen, wenn der Patient nur stark genug daran glaubt.

Dies sind nur zwei Beispiele für den heutigen Umgang einer westlichen Gesellschaft (in diesem Falle der Deutschlands; der Befund kann aber sicherlich auf viele andere Staaten übertragen werden) mit dem Themenkomplex “Hexerei.” Daß dies nicht immer so war, ist allgemein bekannt. Zu Beginn der frühen Neuzeit kam manches Mal die Beschimpfung “Du Hexe!” einem Todesurteil gleich, ist doch etwa in der Spanne von 1560 bis 1680 die Hochzeit der Hexenverfolgungen anzusiedeln, wobei sich drei große Wellen erkennen lassen, nämlich 1560–90, um 1630 und nochmals um 1660. Die Frage, die sich zunächst stellt, ist die nach den Ursprüngen und den Gründen für diese als Hexenwahn bezeichnete Erscheinung. Dazu sollen im folgenden einige Anmerkungen gemacht werden, die die allgemeinen Auffassungen der Zeit vom Hexenwesen umreißen. Die Vorstellungen von der Hexe, ihren Taten und ihrer Verfolgung finden sich schließlich zusammengefaßt im Malleus maleficarum (Hexenhammer) aus dem Jahre 1487. Dessen drei Teile sollen schließlich in Beziehung zu einem Hexenprozeß im Herzogtum Braunschweig 1610 gesetzt werden.

Die Ursprünge des Hexenglaubens liegen im Volksglauben. Man glaubte an die Existenz und Kraft zauberisch begabter Frauen und Männer; Basis dafür boten vermutlich die Überreste heidnischer Naturkulte. Die Kirche hingegen hielt zunächst so gar nichts von der Fähigkeit, Unwetter erregen oder Menschen allein durch Willenskraft erkranken lassen zu können.

At first glance, what can be seen is an exquisite image. The orator is a master musician, his body a lyre as Cicero describes him “playing it” during a rhetorical performance by striking the chords of its harp:

Cicero is talking about delivery (actio, pronuntiatio, or hypokrisis), the rhetorical canon which classified and hierarchized a vast repertoire of non-verbal signs by virtue of their power to communicate effectively and pleasurably.

But some six centuries later, Isidore of Seville would speak of a different kind of bodily harp in his discussion of torture. In the vast cultural compendium captured by his widely disseminated Etymologiarum, the victim of a particular sort of “questioning” is brutalized by means of the stringed instrument known as the fidiculae: “Haec est fidiculae, quia his rei in eculeo torquentur, ut fides inveniatur” (And these things are called the strings or the reins, because, in order that the truth may be found, these kings are tormented on the rack). Later still, Hildegard of Bingen finds in her Causae et curae that the woman's body is “open like a wooden frame (lignum) in which strings have been fastened for strumming (ad citharizandum)”; while, in the devotional context of his Speculum caritatis, Aelred of Rivaulx notes with alarm that the singing voice was often twisted, even “tortured” (torquetur et retorquetur) into unnatural histrionic acts as “the whole body is agitated by theatrical gestures, the lips are twisted, the eyes roll, the shoulders are shrugged, and the fingers bent responsive to every note.” Finally, in the fifteenth-c. Passion d’Auvergne, the rounding up of martyrs for persecution inspires torturer Maulbec to teach his cronies the words of a hunting song which imitates the cries of wounded animals.

For Feiga

Images of female violence, like those of female valor, are extremely rare in early renaissance Italian culture. Virtually no trecento or quattrocento portrayals of women can compare with those featuring Greco-Roman youths who either fatally wound wild beasts or decimate monstrous creatures. Nor are there representations of Christian maidens who are shown mercilessly subduing dragons, as those depicting the triumphs of Saints George (figs. 1– 2) and Michael, respectively. In a culture abounding with statues, paintings, statuettes, and prints of mythological heroes, protagonists who perform courageous but injurious acts are presented primarily as male. These protagonists occasionally appear as coming to the aid of various biblical and Homeric “damsels in distress,” perceived as incapable of fending for themselves (fig. 2). To be sure, in the fifteenth century the notion that a female protagonist could play the role not of passive victim but of active combatant in any given battle was inconceivable. Likewise, the idea that heroines were capable of fearlessly confronting and physically triumphing over a dangerous adversary was not only preposterous but also thought repugnant. Leon Battista Alberti's statement in Libri della famiglia (1441) that “it [does] not befit a woman … to carry a sword” is a revealing reflection of these gender-biased sentiments; so is the comment by Francesco di Lorenzo Filarete, who, in criticizing Donatello's Judith and Holofernes (1457–57, Piazza della Signoria, Florence) in 1504, avers that “it [is] not befitting that a woman should kill a man.”

Among the surviving exceptions to this phenomenon of gender-biased attitudes are a few allegorical statues and paintings of Fortitude, who is personified, at times, as a ferocious armed maiden. The least mentioned but perhaps most interesting variations on the theme—two quasi-mirror images outside and inside the cathedral of San Marco in Venice—date from circa 1230 and are, thus, late-medieval. They feature the Christian virtue under discussion as a young woman who is not only fighting a lion without any assistance (or any kind of protective gear), but who is also prying open its jaws with her own bare hands. As anomalous as both representations are, they are designated for public display: one forms part of the central inner portal of the west facade (fig. 3) and one—apparently the earliest of the two—is a mosaic detail on the interior of the central dome (in one of the sixteen spaces between the windows of the drum—fig. 4).

The earliest representations of sexual violence in Florentine high art date from the middle and late Quattrocento. Their emergence seems to have been spurred on by the use of secular subjects and of Greco-Roman themes in particular. Most extant portrayals of sexually motivated pursuits and assaults (male to female, primarily) display such mythological tales of unbridled lust as those penned by Ovid and Plutarch and such historical accounts of brutal rapes and enforced marriages as those written by Cicero and Livy. Often conceived by art historians as images which pay tribute to male heroism, these portrayals have not formed an iconographical category of their own; nor have they been studied from the perspective of the victimized female figures that they feature. The misogynistic episodes that these depictions glorify appear to have been promoted (in this period still indirectly) by the writings of highly regarded humanists. Thus, like other privileged depictions of istoria, these texts reflect the growing currency which classical ideas must have gained among members of the intellectual and social elite. In addition, the portrayals differ from their Northern European counterparts which, even before the early Renaissance, derive not only from Athenian and Roman cultures but also—and especially—from Biblical stories of female victimization.

One of the themes of sexual violence to appear in quattrocento Florentine as well as Italian high art is Nessus's abduction of Deianira. Mythological in origin, this subject must have been singled out because of its association with Hercules, Deianira's husband, and, more significantly, the most adored and portrayed hero in Tuscany; moreover, introducing a centaur as the would-be rapist, Nessus's abduction of Deianira attests to the immense popularity that the representation of sexually aggressive beastly creatures have in Greek art and literature (fig. 1). Among the extant early renaissance images of the theme, the most famous today is Antonio Pollaiuolo's painting of circa 1465–70 (fig. 2) which exhibits both Nessus's attack on Deianira (on the left) and Hercules's swift and courageous reaction (on the right). Following some of the Florentine artist's other surviving mythological depictions—Hercules and Antaeus as well as Hercules and the Hydra (fig. 3)—the picture's primary purpose is to retell the story of one of the hero's victorious exploits visually. On the other hand, rather than focusing on Hercules, the illustration allows the figures of Nessus and Deianira to acquire equal prominence.

FRANZ KAFKA KNEW HIS FREUD. In complicated ways he grew up and into the age of Freud. Much as the surrealists such as Max Ernst and André Breton “invented” Freud, finding in Freud “scientific” proof of their own manner of seeing the world, Kafka too created his own Freud. And Freud in his deepest fantasies about the psyche invented the world in which Ernst and Breton and Kafka could be imagined. Like Freud’s own “dream book,” which Kafka read and annotated, Kafka’s diaries are full of real, invented, or desired dreams (see Sokel and Born). Indeed, in complex ways and in spite of his struggle with psychoanalysis, Kafka’s fascination with the dream as a key to his own internal life remained consistent over his adult life. But as often as not Kafka’s dreams (like that of Gregor Samsa) were waking dreams: “Ich kann nicht schlafen. Nur Träume kein Schlaf” (T 567; I can’t sleep. Only dreams, no sleep) he wrote on 21 July 1913 (cited in Guidice and Müller 18). These waking dreams are constructed from what Freud calls “day residue,” the images left over from daily experience. Kafka knew this category and wrote on 11 February 1914 to Grete Bloch: “Diese Art Schlaf, die ich habe, ist mit oberflächlichen, durchaus nicht phantastischen, sondern das Tagesdenken nur aufgeregter wiederholenden Träumen durchaus wachsamer und anstrengender als das Wachen” (LFFE 18; This type of sleep I have is superficial, truly not fantastic, rather constructed from the thoughts of day; they are exciting, repetitious dreams that are more lively and exhausting than being awake). On 22 March 1922 Kafka entered into his diary the following dream: “Nachmittag Traum vom Geschwür an der Wange. Die fortwährend zitternde Grenze zwischen dem gewöhnlichen Leben und dem scheinbar wirklicheren Schrecken” (T 913; In the afternoon a dream of a tumor on the cheek. The continually trembling border between the normal life and the seemingly more real horror). Let us imagine with Kafka where such a dream can be located within the world of culture and dreaming of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

KAFKA — AND ALL THE ASSOCIATIONS that name carries with it — has become so much a part of today’s culture that it is hard to imagine the course of modern literature without his presence. Yet when Kafka’s first stories appeared, many readers thought the name was a pseudonym adopted by the Swiss writer Robert Walser. Walser’s short prose texts, which had been appearing sporadically in little magazines since 1899, had a seemingly unmistakable style. In a quietly playful, childlike and yet knowing, sometimes even slyly ironic tone, they presented everyday experiences and familiar human types. While they gently mocked creative genius and the laborious process of narrative composition, they also derived a kind of rapture from noticing small details in the world around the narrator, as he wanders through natural landscapes, engaging in flights of fantasy. The voice that narrates the texts is a personal one, and if it is at times a little eccentric, it is predominantly charming, even captivating. None of this sounds very much like the Kafka we know. Nor is it, in fact, identical with the tone of Kafka’s earliest writings; but turn-of-the-century readers can be forgiven if they were inclined to confuse the two authors.

The texts that Kafka’s contemporaries found so Walseresque were eight short pieces that appeared in the journal Hyperion in 1908 and five pieces that appeared in the Easter supplement of the newspaper Bohemia in 1910. They were reprinted, along with five new texts, in Kafka’s first book-length volume Betrachtung (Meditation), published in December 1912. The brevity of the texts, their often whimsical character, and the way they dwell on minute observations seemed to point in the direction of Robert Walser. So did the fact that several of them depicted a walk or an outing. Yet however much these early prose pieces owe to Walser’s writings, they also add their own characteristic twist to the Swiss author’s narrative schema. It is of course easier to see this in hindsight than it can have been for contemporary readers. Robert Musil, for example, felt troubled by the way in which Kafka’s Betrachtung seemed like a “Spezialfall des Typus Walsers, trotzdem es [= das Buch Betrachtung] früher erschienen ist als dessen Geschichten” (special instance of the Walser type, even though it appeared earlier than Walser’s Stories; Musil 9:1468).

Introduction

THE PAGES OF KAFKA’S FICTION teem with figures who, if they do not explicitly function as artists, are only a tenuous degree away from this calling. Kafka devoted so much of his fictive exposition to artists and their activities that it might be well to designate him, among other things, an aesthetician. Kafka was not, after all, gearing his writing to an academic audience. He was not under constraint to place his articulations under the rubric of some discursive subcontract, whether “aesthetics” or “creative writing,” that would identify his work and assure it an intellectual location and intellectual milieu. He felt as free to expend his writing on his diaries and letters as on his formal fiction.

As Kafka develops his characters, whether “people,” animals, or bizarre thought-things such as Odradek, he endows their artistic activities with features that, assembled in a constellation, form the parameters of a coherent aesthetics, one as distinctive as Kant’s, Hegel’s, or Proust’s. In devising parables to serve as stage settings for his polymorphous artistfigures, he revealed himself to be a rigorous theoretician of art and its roles in “advanced” Western society and culture. While certain of Kafka’s ideas about art clearly derived from the encounter with Western metaphysics and systematic philosophy conducted, among others, by the German Romanticists, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche, under the illumination of his fictive exposition his aesthetic postulates took on a singular character and cast. Kafka’s aesthetics is infused with the rich and non-reproducible imprint of his specific writerly, formal, stylistic, and tonal experiments. The display of such “art-games” may well constitute one of the pivotal features of fiction, at least where a distinctive vision has been allowed to coalesce: serving as a theater in which the elements of reference, possibly related to “experience,” are distilled into aesthetic design-parameters and moods.

The mood of an aesthetics, perhaps the artist’s most distinctive trace, is the palette of tonalities under which a gradation of design-parameters assembles. The singular imprint enabling us to discern the lineaments of an aesthetics within the production of a particular artist is a function of the cohesion of a fictive world combined with aesthetic maturity.