Artificial I's

The Self as Artwork in Ovid, Kierkegaard, and Thomas Mann

Eric Downing

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9783484181274
• eBook ISBN: 9783110925968
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: German Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This study explores three works in which the protagonist undertakes to fashion a literary artwork out of himself: Ovid's »Ars Amatoria«, Kierkegaard's »Diary of the Seducer«, and Thomas Mann's »Felix Krull«. For each work, particular attention is paid to the self-conscious interplay between the author's project of book-making and the character's project of self-making, as well as to the effect of changing notions of self-identity on the protagonist's attempt at life as literature. For »Felix Krull«, this includes a sustained analysis of Mann's incorporation and problematization of various Nietzschean models of aesthestics, reality, and self-identity. In Ovid and Kierkegaard, this study also considers a related project, the attempt to fashion a literary artwork out of another, namely out of a woman.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Chapter I: Ovid and the Ars Amatoria
• I. The Problem
• II. The didactic imitation
• III. The elegiac imitation
• IV. Book I and the nullus pulvis principle
• V. Book II and the servitium artis
• VI. Book III and the anti-Pygmalion principle
• Chapter 2: Kierkegaard and the »Diary of the Seducer«
• I. Kierkegaard and the Ars Amatoria
• II. Literary form and personal identity
• III. Johannes’ life as literature
• IV. The dialectic of self-fashioning
• V. Cordelia and the anti-Pygmalion principle
• Chapter 3: Thomas Mann and the early Felix Krull
• I. Manolescu in the mirror
• II. Inheritance and imitation: Goethe in Felix Krull
• III. Interlude: the new and novel play between
• IV. Felix’s retrospective life as literature
• V. Felix’s dialectic of self-fashioning
• VI. Conscription
• Chapter 4: Thomas Mann and the late Felix Krull
• I. »Wiederkehr«
• II. »Das zitathafte Leben«
• Conclusion
• Bibliography