Foreword by Dennis F. Mahoney

The German Library is a new series of the major works of German literature and thought from medieval times to the present. The volumes have forwards by internationally known writers and introductions by prominent scholars. Excerpts six texts (by La Roche, Forster, Wieland, Moritz, Heinse, and Braker) that show a cross-section of forms and themes that are representative as well as special examples of 18th-century German prose.

Thomas Mann's 1912 novella Death in Venice is one of the most famous and widely read texts in all of modern literature, raising such issues as beauty and decadence, eros and irony, and aesthetics and morality. The amount and variety of criticism on the work is enormous, and ranges from psychoanalytic criticism and readings inspired by Mann's own homosexuality to inquiries into the place of the novella in Mann's oeuvre, its structure and style, and its symbolism and politics. Critics have also drawn connections between the novella and works of Plato, Euripides, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Platen,...