Making Way for the Third Sex: Male-Male Desire in Thomas Mann’s Early Short Fiction

This essay looks at the “queer” characters in Mann’s early fiction, prior to Death in Venice—characters such as Paolo Hofmann in “The Will to Happiness,” Johannes Friedemann in “Little Mr. Friedemann,” Christian Jacoby in “Little Louise,” Detlev Spinell in “Tristan,” and Tonio Kröger in the novella that bears his name. It sets all of these characters in the context of competing late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discourses about sexuality.

“Making Way for the Third Sex: Male-Male Desire in Thomas Mann’s Early Short Fiction,” in A Companion to German Realism, 1848-1900, ed. Todd Kontje (Rochester: Camden House, 2002) 307-38.