Thomas Mann and Shakespeare

Tobias Döring is Chair of English Literature, LMU München, Germany, and past President of the German Shakespeare Society. His latest books are (ed. with Virginia Mason Vaughan) Critical and Cultural Transformations: Shakespeare’s The Tempest – 1611 to the Present and (ed. with Mark Stein) Edward Said’s Translocations: Essays in Secular Criticism.Ewan Fernie is Chair, Professor and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK. His latest book, The Demonic: Literature and Experience, gives considerable attention to Shakespeare and Mann.

When Thomas Mann speaks of ‘the most tremendous case of poetic genius the world has ever seen’, he is referring not to Homer, nor to Goethe – but to Shakespeare. It is strange that this important identification has been so little heeded or seriously examined for so long. At last the present book makes up for such neglect, opening our eyes to the truly ‘tremendous case’ of one of the great dialogues of world literature.[Wenn Thomas Mann über den 'den ungeheuersten Fall von Dichtertum' spricht, 'den die Erde sah', dann spricht er weder von Homer noch von Goethe, sondern von Shakespeare. Es ist eigenartig, wie lange dieses Diktum kaum gehört und wie selten es ernst genommen wurde. Dass das Versäumte mit diesem Buch endlich nachgeholt wird, öffnet den Blick auf den wahrhaft 'ungeheuren Fall' eines Dialogs von weltliterarischem Ausmaß.]

• Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Something Rich and Strange (with A Note onMann’s Shakespeare, by Tobias Döring, LMU München, Germany) Ewan Fernie (University of Birmingham, UK)1 The Violence of Desire: Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Mann Jonathan Dollimore (University of York, UK)2 Laughter in the Throat of Death: Thomas Mann’sShakespearean Sprachkrise Richard Wilson (University of Kingston, UK)3 Masquerades of Love: Love’s Labours’s Lost and the MusicalDevelopment of Shakespeare’s Comedy in Mann’s DoktorFaustus Alexander Honold (Universität Basel, Switzerland)4 The Magic Fountain: Shakespeare, Mann and ModernAuthorship Tobias Döring (LMU München, Germany)5 ‘A dark exception among the rule-abiding’: Thomas Mannand Othello Friedhelm Marx (Universität Bamberg, Germany)6 ‘Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath’:Shakespearean Overtones in Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig John T. Hamilton (Harvard University, USA)7 Shakespeare to Mann, via Wagner Dave Paxton (University of Birmingham, UK)8 ‘Yes—yes, no’: Mann, Shakespeare, and the Struggle forAffirmation Ewan Fernie (University of Birmingham, UK)9 Teenage Fanclub: Mann and Shakespeare in the QueerPantheon Heather Love (University of Pennsylvania, USA)10 A Kind of Loving: Hans Castorp as Model Critic 207David Fuller (University of Durham, UK)11 Changing the Subject Ulrike Draesner (writer and translator, Berlin, Germany)Afterword Elisabeth Bronfen (Universität Zürich, Switzerland)