Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. There is here a fundamental uncertainty, a context of skepticism, that the contributors approach from a variety of angles. All the contributors view the novel as responding to a context of rapid modernization, and questions of metaphysics intersect with the most mundane challenges of everyday life. Theology is central, and related to that are questions of justice, law, ethics, resistance, and subjectivity.

In this volume, the contributors deal with a range of issues arising in this work. Like many other novels of this turbulent period, it offers a tragic quest-narrative in which the hero’s search for truth and clarity (about himself, his alleged guilt, and the anonymous system he is facing) progressively leads to greater and greater confusion, ending with his execution. However, it has just as often been read as a parable of the cold, inhumane rationality of modern bureaucratization. The novel has often been interpreted theologically, expressing a form of radical nihilism in a modern world abandoned by God. Written in a relatively abstract language, it tells the story of Josef K., who is accused of a crime he has no recollection of having committed (and whose nature is never revealed to him). The Trial, written from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925, is a multifaceted, notoriously difficult manifestation of European literary modernism.

The trial novel by franz kafka