The Modernity and the symbol

Considerations on Ein Hungerkünstler and The Minister's

Abstract

This work carries out an exercise in comparative literature between two short narratives: Ein Hungerkünstler by Franz Kafka, first published in 1916; and The Minister's Black Veil, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, from 1836. The axis that guides this comparison is the historical transformation of symbolic representation. There is an emptying and an ironic self-awareness of the use of this literary device in modernist literature. Therefore, the critical procedure of looking for archetypal meanings in these Kafkaesque symbols is questioned, postulating that things mean what they are, however unusual they may be, and that is their representational strength.