Robert Musil - Essayismus als Selbstreflexion der Moderne

It is not Musil's highly regarded novel "The Man without Qualities", which has been the subject of much research, but his essays that form the focus of this innovative study, which defines essayism not as a textual characteristic but as a metatextual textualisation process. As media of cultural self-reflection, Musil's significant essays are at the same time a cultural critique and also a poetology of literary modernity.