delit1-8, Exercise 2: Mann and Brecht

Model answer (check the details):

Form: Mann writes long novels, with a patient, ironic narrator, in the tradition of the nineteenth-century novel (Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain). Brecht writes for the stage and in poems and songs, and developed "epic theatre", which breaks the illusion so the audience stays critical.

Audience: Mann addresses an educated reading public, and his books ask for time and attention. Brecht aimed at a wider theatre audience and later at a working-class one, and often used songs and popular forms (The Threepenny Opera, with Weill).

Attitude to society: Mann starts from the middle-class world he knew and examines its decline and its ideas, moving over time from conservative to democratic positions. Brecht was a Marxist who wanted theatre to change society.

Similarity: both left Germany after 1933 (Chapter 9) and both were deeply concerned with how art relates to politics.