Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
A study of Mann's novel tetralogy of the 1930s that stresses its relationship to three key essays by Mann.
McDonald's study offers fresh insights into Mann's Joseph tetralogy in two ways. Beginning with Mann's well documented love for public performance, he rereads the Joseph novels as a script, showing how performance figures prominently in the form as well as the substance of the narrative. Then he interprets several of the essay-lectures composed during the Joseph years (1926-1943), emphasizing their performative qualities and their conscious (and subliminal) interweavings with the novel. Mann's passionate re-enactment of Kleist's play "Amphitryon" in his 1927 lecture provided a model of identity that he developed fully in Joseph. The model also helped him contain the more pessimistic account of identity he encountered in Freud. The Freud lectures of 1929 and 1936 develop psychoanalysis as an Enlightenment project useful in combating the irrationalism of the Nazis, and carefully control its darker aspects.
McDonald's study offers fresh insights into Mann's Joseph tetralogy in two ways. Beginning with Mann's well documented love for public performance, he rereads the Joseph novels as a script, showing how performance figures prominently in the form as well as the substance of the narrative. Then he interprets several of the essay-lectures composed during the Joseph years (1926-1943), emphasizing their performative qualities and their conscious (and subliminal) interweavings with the novel. Mann's passionate re-enactment of Kleist's play "Amphitryon" in his 1927 lecture provided a model of identity that he developed fully in Joseph. The model also helped him contain the more pessimistic account of identity he encountered in Freud. The Freud lectures of 1929 and 1936 develop psychoanalysis as an Enlightenment project useful in combating the irrationalism of the Nazis, and carefully control its darker aspects.
Price: $130.00
Pages: 290
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Camden House
Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture
Publication Date:
01 June 1999
Trim Size: 22.80 X 15.20 in
ISBN: 9781571131546
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German, Literature: history and criticism
McDonald's study of Joseph and His Brothers breaks exciting new ground. He gives us Thomas Mann the performer, a writer who wrote in order to perform his work at every opportunity, from the family circle to large audiences across Europe. Seeing the Joseph tetralogy as a script as well as a text opens up new interpretive territory.
Beginnings: "Jacob and His Sons"
"Kleist's Amphitryon and the Beginnings of the Joseph Novels
"Freud's Position in the History of Modern Thought": The Containment of Totem and Taboo
Revisionary Narcissism and Perfomance in Young Joseph
Narcissism, Performance, and the Face of the Father in Joseph In Egypt
"The Performance of my Life": The 1936 "Freud" Lecture and Joseph the Provider
"Kleist's Amphitryon and the Beginnings of the Joseph Novels
"Freud's Position in the History of Modern Thought": The Containment of Totem and Taboo
Revisionary Narcissism and Perfomance in Young Joseph
Narcissism, Performance, and the Face of the Father in Joseph In Egypt
"The Performance of my Life": The 1936 "Freud" Lecture and Joseph the Provider