ABSTRACT
Thomas Mann always argued for the 'revolutionary character' of myth. Already in 1929 in his first lecture on Sigmund Freud, 'Freud's Position in the History of Modern Thought', at Munich University he warned against the 'great regression into the obscure, into sacred origins, into the pregnant-pre-conscious, into the mythic-historical-romantic womb' as a 'reactionary appeal'. The meaning of humanizing myth is elucidated by Thomas Mann in reference to an earlier lecture delivered at the Library of Congress on 17 November 1942. According to Mann, if there is something that posterity will find remarkable in Joseph and his Brothers, it will be the fact that myth is 'humanized right into the last nook and cranny of the language' and 'taken out of the hands of fascism.' The 'humanization' of myth means, however, more than simply wresting it from the hands of the fascist obscurantists.
