The Body Encyclopedic: Embodiment in Thomas Mann’s <i>The Magic Mountain</i>

Past critics have too often concluded that the many discourses on the body found in The Magic Mountain are, at best, metaphors for the decay of the prewar European community. This article proposes an alternative reading of Thomas Mann’s novel by exploring how Mann expresses, stages, and dramatizes embodiment. It argues that The Magic Mountain presents what Mann himself termed a “new mind-body entity,” which brings together mind and flesh, effectively challenging a worldview increasingly dominated by the supremacy of disembodying technology and scientific positivism. By analyzing Mann’s overarching use of irony, his reassessment of medical and philosophical discourses, and his dramatization of contemporary technology, this study shows that The Magic Mountain aims to redeem the body from rampant Cartesianism, which, willingly or not, conceptualizes the body as a mound of dumb, useless, ultimately fallible matter.