Dialectics and subjectivity in Die Betrogene, by Thomas Mann

• Grant number: 18/25685-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2019
• End date: March 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Mattos Brito de Almeida
• Grantee: Leonardo Augusto Castilho Thomaz
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to analyze the last novella by Thomas Mann: Die Betrogene - or The betrayed one -, published in 1953, during the author's exile in Switzerland. The analysis will examine the dialectical tensions that structure the relations between the characters, that is, the subjectivities involved and the objectivity that determined them. As a consequence of Modernity and the two World Wars, these relations expose a fracture, making impossible a positive synthesis between opposite poles - or between two subjectivities. Besides, the analysis will also explore the formal impacts provided by these historical movements, expressing a "structural inconstancy" in the narrator. In face of these questions, the philosophy and literary criticism of Theodor W. Adorno will be used as a reference, in order to enable the immanent criticism of the novella.