Illustrated Literature: Future Style, Fertile Spirit, or Futile Waste?

This paper concerns the comparison of standard text-book format and illustrated comic-book format of a literary text, using the parable Before the Law as told in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. This text was chosen because Kafka is known as an author who often causes anxiety and difficulties in reading and understanding among students -- even among those who have had a certain amount of experience with so-called high literature. Two classes of a German grammar school, one of them aged 15, the other aged 17, on average, participated in a reception study investigating readers' different reactions to a literary text offered in two different text formats, one merely textual and the other presenting both textual and visual information. The results of the study concern the relations drawn by the students between the parable and their own reality and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]