Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German


Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German


From the Inside Flap
Eight complex stories illustrative of the author's belief that "a story must tell itself," highlighted by the high art style of the famous title novella.

ANNOTATION

This collection includes Death in Venice, Mario and the Magician, Disorder and Early Sorrow, A Man and His Dog, Felix Krull (the basis for a later novel), The Blood of the Walsungs, Tristan and Tonio Kruger.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This critical edition of Mann's 1912 modernist novella reprints the widely praised translation by David Luke. Accompanying this text, five critical essays examine the work from five contemporary critical perspectives:
Psychoanalytic Criticism, by Rodney Symington
Reader-Response Criticism, by Lilian Furst
Cultural Criticism, by John Burt Foster, jr.
Gender Criticism, by Robert Tobin
New History, by Russell Berman

A succinct introduction to the history, principles, and practice of each critical approach precedes each essay. Readers may also benefit from extensive bibliographies following the essays and a glossary of critical and theoretical terms.

The editor's introduction to the book discusses biographical and historical contexts for both Mann and his text. Her survey of critical responses to it starts in 1912 and ends in 1998.

SYNOPSIS

This collection includes Death in Venice, Mario and the Magician, Disorder and Early Sorrow, A Man and His Dog, Felix Krull (the basis for a later novel), The Blood of the Walsungs, Tristan and Tonio Kruger.

FROM THE CRITICS

Kirkus Reviews

New versions of 12 celebrated stories, including the famous title novella, many previously collected in Mann's seminal Stories of Three Decades. Neugroschel's persuasive "Preface" makes a strong case for fresh translations, given both this century's inevitable linguistic shifts and Mann's employment within individual works of specific vocabularies and styles (e.g., those of Wagnerian opera in the hair-raising "The Blood of the Walsungs"). And Neugr"schel essentially finesses the issue of revealing the stories' inherent sexuality; their author was, after all, a master of elegant indirection dedicated to muted presentations of matters that were anathema to both his public and his own sedulously respectable persona. That said, it's wonderful to have vivid, lucid English versions of Mann's sophisticated portrayals of sexual obsession and humiliation ("Little Herr Friedemann"), illness- as-metaphor in a tale ("Tristan") that concisely prefigures The Magic Mountain, and the transfiguring intersection of artistic with homosexual passion (Death in Venice, Tonio Kr"ger). Brilliant work, in any case, from one of the century's great writers.