Abjection and adoption in Lessing, Kleist, and Kafka

This thesis looks at the intertextuality among Lessing's Nathan der Weise, Kleist's Der Findling and Kafka's Das Urteil. Focus is laid on the repeated deployment of specific character types: an elderly, morally minded merchant and his adopted children. By tracing the similarities and differences of these literary works, themes of economics and adoption come to be understood as central motifs in these texts, and the different depictions of these motifs are shown to reflect differing notions of the self. The analyses in this thesis draw heavily upon the theory of the abject as portrayed in Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Whereas Kristeva understands abjection as functioning within the context of a "social economy," this thesis tracks its treatment within other economic structures, starting with a moral economy in Lessing's drama, moving to an emotional economy in Kleist's novella, and ending with a semiotic economy in Kafka's novella.