Overview

Sixteen new, carefully focused essays on the prose works of one of the great writers of modernity. Thomas Mann is among the greatest of German prose writers, and was the first German novelist to reach a wide English-speaking readership since Goethe. Novels such as Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and Doktor Faustus attest to his mastery of subtle, distanced irony, while novellas such as Death in Venice reveal him at the height of his mastery of language. In addition to fresh insights about these best-known works of Mann, this volume treats less-often-discussed works such as Joseph and His Brothers, Lotte in Weimar, and Felix Krull, as well as his political writings and essays. Mann himself was a paradox: his role as family-father was both refuge and facade; his love of Germany was matched by his contempt for its having embraced Hitler. While in exile during the Nazi period, he functioned as the prime representative of the ""good"" Germany in the fight against fascism, and he has often been remembered this way in English-speaking lands. But a new view of Mann is emerging half a century after his death: a view of him as one of the great writers of a modernity understood as extending into our 21st century. This volume provides sixteen essays by American and European specialists. They demonstrate the relevance of his writings for our time, making particular use of the biographical material that is now available. Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Manfred Dierks, Werner Frizen, Clayton Koelb, Helmut Koopmann, Wolfgang Lederer, Hannelore Mundt, Peter Putz, Jens Rieckmann, Hans Joachim Sandberg, Egon Schwarz, and Hans Vaget. Herbert Lehnert is Research Professor, and Eva Wessell is Lecturer in Humanities, both at the University of California, Irvine.

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9781571134059

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Reviews

Lehnert and Wessell, themselves accomplished Mann scholars, assembled a stellar team of specialists from three countries for this collection...offers a wealth of insights. Essential. CHOICE (The book gives) reliable and readable accounts of Mann's works. It also introduces readers to current scholarship on those works. It thus accomplishes exactly what it is meant to do. It does so, moreover, in admirable breadth and depth. MONATSHEFTE This collection of essays forms part of a Camden House series in which 27 volumes have appeared since 1999 and which will eventually provide a panorama of the accepted peaks of German and Austrian literature from Hartmann von Aue to Thomas Bernhard and beyond. Almost without exception, the contributions provide good, general introductions to the texts under discussion and new insights for the specialist, or both. MLR Together with familiar facts well known to the reader of Thomas Mann one also finds quite original insights.... This work is of such richness that it would be useful translated into German to make it available to a larger public. ETUDES GERMANIQUES

Lehnert and Wessell, themselves accomplished Mann scholars, assembled a stellar team of specialists from three countries for this collection...offers a wealth of insights. Essential. CHOICE (The book gives) reliable and readable accounts of Mann's works. It also introduces readers to current scholarship on those works. It thus accomplishes exactly what it is meant to do. It does so, moreover, in admirable breadth and depth. MONATSHEFTE This collection of essays forms part of a Camden House series in which 27 volumes have appeared since 1999 and which will eventually provide a panorama of the accepted peaks of German and Austrian literature from Hartmann von Aue to Thomas Bernhard and beyond. Almost without exception, the contributions provide good, general introductions to the texts under discussion and new insights for the specialist, or both. MLR Together with familiar facts well known to the reader of Thomas Mann one also finds quite original insights... This work is of such richness that it would be useful translated into German to make it available to a larger public. ETUDES GERMANIQUES

Lehnert and Wessell, themselves accomplished Mann scholars, assembled a stellar team of specialists from three countries for this collection...offers a wealth of insights. Essential. CHOICE (The book gives) reliable and readable accounts of Mann's works. It also introduces readers to current scholarship on those works. It thus accomplishes exactly what it is meant to do. It does so, moreover, in admirable breadth and depth. MONATSHEFTE This collection of essays forms part of a Camden House series in which 27 volumes have appeared since 1999 and which will eventually provide a panorama of the accepted peaks of German and Austrian literature from Hartmann von Aue to Thomas Bernhard and beyond. Almost without exception, the contributions provide good, general introductions to the texts under discussion and new insights for the specialist, or both. MLR Together with familiar facts well known to the reader of Thomas Mann one also finds quite original insighher with familiar facts well known to the reader of Thomas Mann one also finds quite original insights.... This work is of such richness that it would be

Author Information

HANS RUDOLF VAGET is Professor Emeritus of German Studies at Smith College, MA.

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