The Magic Mountain

Lodovico Settembrini is a character in The Magic Mountain, a novel by Thomas Mann. Settembrini represents the active and positive ideal of the... Enlightenment, of Humanism, democracy, tolerance and human rights. Settembrini's appearance is often associated with illumination, increasing light, as noted in Mann's preface to the novel as an illustration of his technique of leitmotiv. He compares himself as a humanist to Prometheus of Greek mythology, who brought of fire and enlightenment to Man. His own mentor Giosuè Carducci has even written a hymn to another lightbringer: to Lucifer, "la forza vindice della ragione." His ethics are those of bourgeois values and labour. He tries to counter Castorp's morbid fascination with death and disease, warns him against the ill Madame Chauchat, and tries to demonstrate a positive outlook on life. His antagonist Naphta describes him as "Zivilisationsliterat". Mann originally constructed Settembrini as a caricature of the liberal-democratic novelist, represented for example by his own brother Heinrich Mann.
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In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the... protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important. The term was coined in 1819 by philologist Karl Morgenstern in his university lectures, and later famously reprised by Wilhelm Dilthey, who legitimized it in 1870 and popularized it in 1905. The genre is further characterized by a number of formal, topical, and thematic features. The term coming-of-age novel is sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman, but its use is usually wider and less technical. The birth of the Bildungsroman is normally dated to the publication of Goethe’s The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister in 1795–96. Although the Bildungsroman arose in Germany, it has had extensive influence first in Europe and later throughout the world. Thomas Carlyle translated Goethe’s novel into English, and after its publication in 1824, many British authors wrote novels inspired by it.
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