Literature as a Strategy of Immunization Immunity has become a key concept in recent years. Johannes Türk adopts this idea and makes it fruitful for literary and cultural studies: literature and immunity are closely interconnected, according to his thesis. One could even argue that literature makes people immune to the demands of life. For instance, Türk interprets the function of tragedy in Aristotle and Schiller, as well as the form of the Bildungsroman. The book follows the historical discovery of medical immunity since antiquity and connects it with literary appropriations of immunity in the works of Goethe, Thomas Mann, Proust, and Freud. Türk recognizes immunity as a central paradigm of cultural studies and, through his surprising interpretations, demonstrates the impulses that can arise from this new perspective.