Memoria, Gender, Imagination

The first section of this study discussed how Thomas Mann’s Mario und der Zauberer and his Der Tod in Venedig serve as literary fulcra, or pivot points, in the early 20th century narration of Italy. Since their publication, many texts, including Wolfgang Koeppen’s Der Tod in Rom and Gert Hofmann’s Auf dem Turm, have focussed directly on the legacy of Mann’s literary Bildungsreisen to Italy. Having studied these close intertextual engagements with the shifting role that “Italy” plays in relation to the literary Bildungsreise, it is now worth giving attention to three texts that shift their foci away from this close intertextual dialogue. This second section is dedicated to three differ-ent iterations of “Italy” that focus on what role “Italy” can play in our under-standing of memoria, gender, and imagination.