The Egyptian Enlightenment and Mann, Freud, and Freund

Abstract

In her article "The Egyptian Enlightenment and Mann, Freud, and Freund" Rebecca C. Dolgoy discusses various ways in which ancient Egypt is used in three works from the 1930s: Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, and Karl Freund's film The Mummy. By showing the similarities and differences in how these works use Egypt, Dolgoy develops the concept that memory is the way in which the past is used. Dolgoy follows the structure of a cinematic shot casting: The Mummy as the long shot which both sets up the general Egyptomania characteristic of the 1930s and situates Freund's film in post-World War I memory culture, Moses and Monotheism as the medium shot because Freud goes to the past in order to dredge specific narrative strains, and Dolgoy focuses on the detail and narrative richness of Mann's Joseph tetralogy as the close-up. Mann's take on creating mythological origin stories that both resonate with modern readers and implicate them in the piecing together of these stories in order to create meaning emerges as relevant for contemporary cultural memory studies.