I'm not nearly as far along as most of you. But just yesterday I ran across “Province, Nation, and Empire in Thomas Mann’s
Buddenbrooks” published in
German Studies Review, Oct. 2006 by Todd Kontje, University of California. The abstract gives a good summary of the main lines of thought in the piece:
“
Buddenbrooks depicts the decline of the Hanseatic city-state . . . and the rise of the German National-state . . . .
Buddenbrooks also reflects the development of global trade and overseas colonies, particularly in the trans-Atlantic realm. Mann’s novel . . . thus engages the panoply of fears that accompanied the process of German nationalization in an age of empire, including anxiety about the collapse of traditional social hierarchies, the inversion of gender roles, and the danger of racial contamination.”
Kontje states that Mann was not an Empire writer in the style of Kipling, Conrad or Forster, but that he still was influenced by “the events and ideas of the Age of Empire to a greater extent than is generally acknowledged . . . .”
As I stated at the beginning, I still am not very far into the novel, but my usual approach (and naturally everyone has his or her own preferred method} is to try to isolate thematic movements in the work. So perhaps the three basic themes in the abstract give some over-arching directions of analysis to examine {whether or not they are as relevant as Kontje thinks}. Sometimes, in fact, disagreement can be a quite rewarding process.
