Thomas Mann : The Uses of Tradition

This is an entirely updated edition of T.J. Reed's study of Thomas Mann, one of the greatest German novelists of the 20th century. Focusing on Mann's relations with German and European traditions, it traces the literary and philosophical sources from which he drew inspiration.

T.J. Reed''s study has long established itself as the standard work in English on Thomas mann, and offers as comprehensive a view of Mann''s fiction and thought as is available in any language. It is based on a coherent close reading of Mann''s oeuvre, literary and political, and also on manuscripts and sources, and was part of the first phase of literary scholarship that opened up the resources of the Zurich Thomas Mann Archive. Further documents that have appeared since then - Mann''s diaries, notebooks, and other correspondences - have not fundamentally altered the individual interpretations or the overall picture the study offers, and in some respects have emphatically confirmed them. A further chapter added to this edition covers the new documentation, gives a vigorous account of the main curents in Mann scholarship and criticism over the last two decades suggesting how we should now see the writer, the man, and the political figure, and above all the complex relationship between the three.