Buddenbrooks-Handbuch

"Buddenbrooks. Verfall einer Familie" (1901) laid the foundation for Thomas Mann's extraordinary career as a writer and representative of German literature and culture worldwide. The novel is not only one of the Nobel Prize-winning and most widely read texts in German-language literature, but also one of the most widely interpreted. This handbook brings together the extensive research on the novel and presents not only the history of its creation and reception, but also its central themes and structures. It addresses not only family, economy, and religion, but also seemingly marginal themes such as food and drink or elements of the fantastic. In addition, the handbook opens up interpretative and literary-theoretical approaches to the text, from social history to theories of memory or femininity and masculinity constructions to knowledge.