TWO NOVELS ABOUT GENDER

TWO NOVELS ABOUT GENDER

At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, discourses about gender and sexuality experienced an unprecedented flourishing across Europe in all sectors of society: politics, journalism, science (and pseudo-science), philosophy, visual arts, literature. Especially in the arts, these concerns – an early version of "gender turmoil" (Butler), which as a theoretical conception appears close to 'our' Millennium – constitute one of the central cores of the then emerging, multifaceted modernist current. Thomas Mann – a writer with a seismographic sense of the happenings of each historical era that he experienced in his long literary career – could not remain unaffected by this climate. The two short stories from his first period, presented here in the first Greek translation, delve into the issues of gender, highlighting the unique literary characteristics that he would later develop extensively in his major works: masterfully robust and enjoyable narration combined with intertextual 'play' , minimalism, irony, humor and subversion.

The Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann (1875-1955), one of the leading writers of the 20th century, belongs to the most prominent representatives of "modernism" - in a hybrid, broad sense: in his works the - basically - realistic narrative is imbued with a strongly modernist nuance. He was born in Lübeck, northern Germany, lived for many years in Munich, during National Socialism he fled to Switzerland and then to the USA, from where, through his eponymous broadcasts on the BBC, he urged the Germans to overthrow Hitler. After the war he settled in Switzerland. Novels: The Buddenbrooks (1901), The magic mountain (1924), Joseph and his brothers (1933-1943), Lotte in Weimar (1939), Doctor Faustus (1947), Confessions of Fraudster Felix Krull (1954) et al. Best-known novels: Tony Kreger (1903), Tristan (1903), Death in Venice (1912), Mario and the Wizard (1930), The cheated one (1953). He also wrote numerous short stories as well as critical essays of political, literary and philosophical content.