Towards a dynamic edition: making Kafka's writing process accessible to a general audience

Prof. Kiyoko Myojo, Seijo University, Japan; Visiting Research Fellow Jesus College, Oxford

There is a large gap between Kafka scholars and general readers of Kafka. Scholars have been made aware of the fragmentary and unfinished nature of Kafka's texts through scholarly editions. But general readers are normally only aware of the neat reading texts that are available on the market (and even if they were to pick up a scholarly edition, they would likely be overwhelmed by its inaccessible style). To illustrate the problem of the gap between scholars and general readers I will use the example of current Japanese translations of Kafka's texts and how they mislead the audience about the nature of his writings. I then indicate how a 'dynamic' edition of Kafka's texts could resolve this problem. In particular, I focus on two of Kafka's texts — The Trial and The Castle — and show how they can be edited to reveal Kafka's writing process whilst still being accessible to a non-specialist audience.