Anthony Heilbut, Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature.
Ronald Hayman, Thomas Mann: A Biography.
T. J. Reid, Death in Venice: Making and Unmaking a Master.
Erich Heller, The Disinherited Mind. Essays in Modern German Literature and Thought.
Erich Heller, Thomas Mann: The Ironic German.

Death in Venice. Produced and directed by Luchino Visconti. Dirk Bogarde is Aschenbach.
Death in Venice. Opera by Benjamin Britten. (Music Library)

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For a piece outlining the latest research on homosexuality among animals please read "Animals' Fancies" in the Jan 4 '97 issue of Science News. The most recent book on the subject is by Bruce Bagemihl: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. St. Martin's, 1999.
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To understand the specifically German tradition of concepts like "grace", "fall from grace", "knowledge", "loss of innocence", "second innocence" etc. (our DiV text pp. 204/5) read Heinrich von Kleist's piece on Puppet Theatre (partial hand-out). Of course Kleist's brilliant essay proposes to do more than merely explain consciousness and self-consciousness. And like most "theory" it is less of a tool than another text itself in need of exegesis.

For a more conventional but no less rewarding teatment of the subject consult, among many others,

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)
Robert E. Ornstein, The Psychology of Consciousness (1972)
Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained (1991)
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For those of you who would like to explore the topic of Gender Ambivalence in Death in Venice, here's a brief summary of my lecture, but without the iconographical evidence that I presented in class (sorry).