| This dissertation treats adventure in works of literature by Thomas Mann from an interpretive vantage point. Adventure is characterized in terms of the philosophical views of Georg Simmel and Friedrich Nietzsche. Broad in scope, the dissertation considers such major works by Mann as Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Der Tod in Venedig, Der Zauberberg, Joseph und seine Bruder, and Doktor Faustus. Also, Fyodor Dostoevsky's In short, the dissertation explains the central role of adventure in Mann's literary works, addressing both the artistic and the political side of things. For Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen is a propagandistic essay that concerns the relation between art and politics and that struggles to accept the foreseen, inevitable ascendancy of democracy in Germany as a lasting consequence of the First World War, while Doktor Faustus employs political allegory as a means of depicting Nazi Germany from a cultural perspective. However, the dissertation rejects the political allegory on the grounds that Mann's cultural perspective on Germany's catastrophic political adventure is inadequate. |
