Unbecoming: Klaus Mann, failure, and the queer novel

Thesis

This thesis puts forward a re-examination of Klaus Mann’s long-form prose works as an intentional and intensified practice of the queering potential of the novel genre. It reevaluates Mann’s work through close readings utilising lenses of genre theory and queer theory. It demonstrates that, in his work, failure as both a formal and thematic principle functions to challenge normativities with a gesture of insistent refusal that expands the potential of living through processes of undoing and unbecoming.

The body of the thesis is divided into three chapters. The first focusses on the novels Der fromme Tanz and Flucht in den Norden, investigating them as Bildungsromane that highlight the inconsistency of the genre overall: that ongoing development and the resolution of an ending are incompatible. By refusing such resolution, Mann demonstrates that failure itself can be generative, sparking ongoing reorientations to access new ways of existing. Chapter Two addresses the biofictional novels Alexander and Symphonie Pathétique, using ideas of unfulfilled and unfulfillable desires which incite onwards movement within and beyond the text to show the ongoing hope and desire that continuous, constructive failures can allow. In the third chapter, Treffpunkt im Unendlichen and Der Vulkan are treated as examples of montagestructured chronicles. Through their patchwork construction, they suggest the individual’s dissolution and the limits of representation, emphasising the purpose locatable in communities that outlive individual characters and the hope that failure can intervene in crises as an impetus for change.

I argue that while the novel is a mode inherently open to failure, Klaus Mann’s programmatic exploration of different formal frameworks and recurring queer characters that invite outsider perspectives on the systems they live in allows us to resituate his work at a juncture of failure and hope, and sheds light on the queering potentialities of the modernist novel more generally.

Authors: Crawford, R

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-2nden9gvk
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: Klaus Mann; failure; queer theory; genre theory
• Subjects: Gay men's writings, German; Modernism (Literature)