Readings on the Trapeze. Kafka’s Critical Reception in Spain and Spanish America between 1965 and 1983

Abstract

The critical reception of Franz Kafka´s works in Spain and Spanish America can be organized in a series of periods that, along with certain continuities and interruptions, make up a narrative of reading processes and the political and cultural horizons on
which these are inscribed. The period the present article focuses on extends from the mid-1960s, when the reception of Spanish criticism is reactivated, until 1983, the year in which the author’s one- hundredth birthday was celebrated. In this period, the work of Kafka, already part of the canon, is subjected to the tensions of literary theory, while leaving behind the essentialist and hagiographic interpretations of the post-war period.