Taking as its main point of reference the recent “Meridianoµ dedicated to Alberto Asor Rosa’s Scritture critiche e d’invenzione, which includes, among other things, the first and third chapters of Thomas Mann or bourgeois ambiguity (1971), the essay recreates the intellectual mood of the years in which the Italian critic’s reflection on the great German writer evolved, and identifies some elements which, destined to have a subsequent theoretical development, help to better frame the book of Mann.