Erzählen nach Wagner

Essays, novels and stories bear witness to Thomas Mann’s life-long and intensive engagement with the personality and works of Richard Wagner, and in many commentaries on his own work he writes of transferring the effects of music-drama into his literary work. But how does this transfer appear in real terms? How can it be demonstrated even where the content includes no explicit reference to Wagner or his work?

Taking an interdisciplinary approach which places the narrative at the centre, the author examines the potential for linking the novel Joseph und seine Brüder with the music-drama Der Ring des Nibelungen.

By augmenting the literary perspective with a sophisticated musicological analysis of narrative strategies in the Ring, she is able to show how the music-drama leaves its musical and intellectual traces in the literary work. The result is a symbolic intensification in the “negative” novel, where values are reassessed in a way which can be traced particularly in the “work on incest”.