num_pages: 246
description: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, one of the outstanding novels of this century, boldly attempts to explain and trace the historical sources of German National Socialism. In this narrativa, Mann employs a "montage technique" which makes extensive use of quotations adopted from many sources as he models fictional characters and event upon historical reality.With this book, published in 1969, Gunilla Bergsten completed the first full-length study of Mann's most complex novel, utilizing the extensive materials in the Thomas Mann Archives in Zürich, which includes Mann's personal library with his fascinating marginal annotations. At the time, his diaries were still disclosed. In the introductory chapters, Bersten investigates Mann's source materials and the literary techniques which transform disparate details into an artistic whole. Although Mann describes the genesis of Doctor Faustus in The Story of a Novel, Bergsten amplifies his discussion of montage technique by revealing the astonishing amount of "borrowing" to which he resorted in creating this account of 'the life of the German composer Adrian Leverkühn.'The second part of this work is concerned with interpretations of Doctor Faustus as a reflection of Doctor Faustus as a reflection of 20th century German history. After summarizing previous criticism, Bergsten builds further interpretations on the solid ground of Mann's Mann's comprehensive source material. In Mnn's view, National Socialism could be regarded as a kind of disease whose germs first infected the life of the nation at the time of the Reformation, then caused repeated and more serious bouts of illness leading up to the crisis of World War II. The symptoms, Mann suggests, became noticeable in the spheres of religion and music before political life was seen to be affected, and thus the life of the protagonist, Adrian Leverkühn, is presented in counterpoint to the decline and fall of Germany.
language: English
title: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus Sources and Structure of the Novel
titlecomplete: Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus Sources and Structure of the Novel
ratings_count: 2
publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd)