The Erotic Gaze of the Italienreise: Wilhelm von Gloeden and Der Tod in Venedig

Abstract

ABSTRACT From Winckelmann and Platen to Goethe and Mann, the cultural narrative of the German ‘Italian journey’ spins a highly intertextual web — one often embedded within a subtext of homoerotic interests. This article expands on the homoerotic iconography of Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig (1912) by comparing the novella’s visual language to the fin-de-siècle Sicilian photographs of Wilhelm von Gloeden. As both works play into a long-running codification of homosexual desire through the Italian imaginary of classical and Renaissance art, a comparative reading delves into tropes of pederasty, exoticism, and nostalgia.