Figure della morte in Thomas Mann

Abstract

The essay is an attempt at delineating a typology of the literary representations of death in the works of Thomas Mann, implementing literary analysis with references to the visual arts. The analysis touches on three forms of ars moriendi – considered as “practice of dying” rather than as the late-medieval “preparation to death” – : the Liebestod (as in Tristan and in Buddenbrooks, in which death and ecstasy merge), the “decent death” (enacting a sort of ritual, which undramatizes death itself and deprives the corpse of any disturbing feature), and the “improper death”, making the dying character an object of mockery.