Elise Nykänen, a visiting scholar from the University of Helsinki, will present "Breaking the Frozen Sea Inside Us: Allegory, Affect, and Kafka's Play on Narrative Empathy in 'The Metamorphosis'." This talk addresses Franz Kafka’s use of narrative empathy, both its tender and dark potential in the design of his allegory “Die Verwandlung” (“The Metamorphosis”). The presentation shows how Kafka employs narrative empathy for evoking ambivalent emotion effects in his authorial audience: amazement, disgust, amusement, sympathy, and pity. The talk focuses on the rhetorical and narrative techniques Kafka utilizes in his allegory to achieve his goal of waking up the audience “with a blow on the head,” especially through fooling the readers into feeling pity for the suffering and self-deceiving protagonist.
