The Con Game as Art Form: Herman Melville and Thomas Mann

Lecture by Elisabeth Bronfen.  

In our post-factual world, in which alternative facts compete with truth, issues of confidence and skepticism, peddling in hope and betraying this promise have again become timely concerns. In my lecture, I will look at The Confidence-Man by Melville to discuss the political, psychoanalytic and aesthetic aspects of this literary theme. Thomas Mann’s Die Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull will allow me to compare the European imposter with the American confidence game.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Elisabeth Bronfen is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich as well as Global Distinguished Professor at New York University.

She earned her PhD at the University of Munich with her work on literary space in the work of Dorothy M. Richardson’s novel Pilgrimage, as well as her habilitation on representations of femininity and death, Over Her Dead Body. A specialist in the 19th and 20th century literature, she has also written articles and books in the area of gender studies, psychoanalysis, film, cultural theory and visual culture.