Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain

This collection seeks to illustrate the ways in which Thomas Mann's 1924 novel, The Magic Mountain, has been newly construed by some of today's most astute readers in the field of Mann studies. The essays, many of which were written expressly for this volume, comment on some of the familiar and inescapable topics of Magic Mountain scholarship, including the questions of genre and ideology, the philosophy of time, and the ominous subjects of disease and medical practice. Moreover, this volume offers fresh approaches to the novels underlying notions of masculinity, to its embodiment of the cultural code of anti-Semitism, and to its precarious relationship to the rival media of photography, cinema, and recorded sound.

Readership: Scholars and students of modern literature and German studies.

Hans Rudolph Vaget, Shedd Professor of German Studies, Smith College

Introduction, HANS RUDOLF VAGET
1: The Making of The Magic Mountain, HANS RUDOLF VAGET
2: Death, Knowledge and the Formation of Self: The Magic Mountain, MARTIN TRAVERS
3: Photography and Bildung in The Magic Mountain, ERIC DOWNING
4: Projections on Blank Space: Landscape, Nationality, and Identity in Der Zauberberg, NANCY P. NENNO
5: Politically Suspect: Music on the Magic Mountain, HANS RUDOLF VAGET
6: Naphta and His Ilk: Jewish Characters in Manns Magic Mountain, FRANKA MARQUARDT AND YAHYA ELSAGHE
7: Linke Leute von rechts: Thomas Manns Naphta and the Ideological Confluence of Radical Right and Radical Left in the Early Years of the Weimar Republic, ANTHONY GRENVILLE
8: Modern Masculinities on the Magic Mountain, TODD KONTJE
9: The Magic Mountain Malady: Der Zauberberg and the Medical Community 1924-2006, MALTE HERWIG
10: Telling Timelessness in Der Zauberberg, DORRIT COHN
11: The Magic Mountain: A Humoristic Counterpart to Death in Venice, ELLIS SHOOKMAN
FURTHER READINGS