Narrative Identitätsentwürfe. Erzählen zwischen Vermittlung und Selbstbefragung in Thomas Manns "Joseph und seine Brüder" und "Doktor Faustus"

The study focuses on the narrative formation of cultural identity and examines the novels‘ techniques which contribute to the depiction of history and identity. In order to reveal the forms of criticizing historical narratives which go with stories of the Self and the Other, the analysis concentrates on the relation of narrative representation and the story and on strategies of self-reflection. The theoretical part develops a discourse critical perspective taking historiophilosophical, narratological and postcolonial concepts into account. Methodologically it follows Paul Ricour and Homi K. Phabha among others to describe the semantic conditions of conferring meaning by means of narration on the one hand, and the importance of narratives in terms of identity formation on the other. The way both works use a biografic structure makes the relation between identity and history a crucial moment in their narrative composition. From a cultural- narratological point of view the connection of identity and the depiction of history becomes a main theme of "Joseph und seine Brüder" and "Doktor Faustus". The second hypothesis follows the idea of a representation problem resulting from the coexistence of historical and biographical narration. Consequently conflicting strategies which serve to parralel individual and collective narratives are questioned and their divergent premises analyzed. Concentrating on contradiction the approach follows earlier results of the younger Thomas Mann studies that view him as a modernist author. The study sets out to investigate a poetological concept expressed by the self-referencial narrators, which includes the analysis of different kinds of metanarrative and metafictional commentary present and their effects. It can be shown that the highly dynamic interplay of discours and histoire decisively generates the aesthetic qualities of the works in question. The study examines the narrative construction with the intention to highlight the specific qualities and problems. Strategies of interpretation, reader guidance and the narrator’s justification are being criticized. The study follows the anti-essentialist postcolonial view of a concept of identity. Therefor the terms of decentralization and hybridity are employed as narrative concepts to describe the diverging yet concurrent explanatory models and interpretations.