Cultural chronotopes and literary time-space in Thomas Mann

Abstract

The article moves from the concept of chronotope in literature. It is the narrative timespace: an interweaving of stories and geographies. Thomas Mann’s literary chronotope evokes the multiple features of human Bildung suspended in changes of space and time. The essay therefore considers the changing chronotopies of some of Mann’s major texts (Tonio Kröger, Gedanken im Kriege, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Der Zauberberg), focusing on the bourgeois Selbstanschauung (“self-perception”) and Weltansicht (“worldview”), which emerge from the relationship between Kultur, Zivilisation and Bildung.