MISE-EN-SCÈNE AS A STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC PRINCIPLE OF THEATRICALITY IN THOMAS MANN’S NOVELLA “LUISCHEN”

Abstract

The article examines the poetics of theatricality in Thomas Mann’s early novella “Luischen” through the analytical lens of mise-en-scène. In Mann’s work, theatricality is realised not merely at the level of the “world-as-theatre” metaphor, which derives from the Shakespearean tradition, but also at the level of the text’s compositional and discursive structure, where mise-en-scène functions as the dominant meaning-generating mechanism. The study argues that mise-en-scène in the novella does not operate as an auxiliary device; rather, it constitutes a fundamental structural and semantic principle that governs the narrative’s compositional organisation, the system of psychological characterisation, and the philosophical conception of the work. This principle enables the artistic realisation of the novella’s central theme – the tragic subjugation of existential experience to the laws of theatrical performance – which manifests itself in the systematic transformation of everyday scenes into stage compositions, and of characters into bearers of masks and dramaturgical personae.