Au chapitre 4 de "L' Homme sans qualités", Musil présente son personnage principal, Ulrich, comme doué d'un sens du possible, qu'il définit ainsi : "L'homme qui en est doué, par exemple, ne dira pas : ici s'est produite, va se produire, doit se produire telle ou telle chose; mais il imaginera : ici pourrait, devrait se produire telle ou telle chose; et quand on lui dit d'une chose qu'elle est comme elle est, il pense qu’elle pourrait aussi bien être autre. Ainsi pourrait-on définir simplement le sens du possible comme la faculté de penser tout ce qui pourrait être "aussi bien", et de ne pas accorder plus d'importance à ce qui est qu'à ce qui n'est pas » (L''Homme sans qualités, §4). De manière générale, nous examinons ce sens du possible, dans ses différentes mises en œuvre, à l'aune des remarques conceptuelles de Wittgenstein sur la possibilité. Dans le domaine théorique, l'interprétation de la thèse de Musil sur Mach permet de montrer que, par comparaison avec la démarche scientifique, le sens du possible est la capacité à penser non seulement toutes les possibilités réelles mais aussi toutes les possibilités concevables, et ce par opposition à l'induction et à la recherche de causes. Dans le domaine de la conduite de la vie, la lecture philosophique d'un roman de Musil permet de montrer que le sens du possible est non pas la solution mais l'expression du problème de la vie juste (« comment dois-je vivre ?"). Enfin, dans une dernière partie, on rapporte le sens du possible au développement d'utopies, c'est-à-dire des vies et des hommes concevables mais pas nécessairement possibles en vertu de la réalité. / In the fourth chapter of "The Man without qualities", Robert Musil presents his main character, Ulrich, as endowed with a « sense of possibility» : "Whoever has it does not say, for instance : Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents : here this or that might, could or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think : well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what it is than to what is not." (The Man without qualities, §4). ln a general way, on studies this sense of possibility, in its various applications, in relation with Wittgenstein's conceptual remarks. ln the theoretical field, the Interpretation of Musil's PhD on Mach allows to think that, by comparison with the scientific method, the sense of possibility is the ability to think not only all the real possibilities, but also the conceivable possibilities, by contrast with induction and research of causes. ln the field of the conduct of lite, the philosophical reading of the novel allows to think that the sense of possibility is not the solution but the expression of the problem of the right life. Finally, in the last part, one relates the sense of possibility to the development of utopias, of men and lifes conceivable but not necessarily possible by virtue of reality.

Qu’est-ce que l’« ironie » ? Les multiples définitions de ce concept renvoient à des phénomènes si divers qu’il est impossible d’opérer une classification raisonnée, englobant toutes les manifestations possibles de ce que l’on nomme « ironie ». L’on peut cependant constater que la recherche sur l’ironie se décline en trois grandes orientations, correspondant aux trois domaines d’étude distincts que sont la linguistique, la littérature et la philosophie. Il nous a semblé intéressant de tenter d’approcher cette notion de manière plus globale en vérifiant si les différentes définitions de l’ironie ne peuvent pas, sinon trouver un dénominateur commun, du moins entrer en interaction. Ce travail croise ainsi les différents champs d’étude consacrés à l’ironie, afin d’aboutir à une conception plus globale du phénomène. Nous avons tâché de surmonter les contradictions qu’entraîne la confrontation des diverses définitions théoriques particulières du concept en privilégiant une approche empirique du phénomène dans une œuvre particulière : L'Homme sans qualités de Robert Musil. Notre travail a pour objectif de déterminer s'il est possible de mettre en évidence l’existence de « signaux » linguistiques de l’ironie comme « rapport au réel » au niveau du texte littéraire où elle s’exprime. Nos recherches s’articulent ainsi autour de trois grands axes: l'analyse pluridisciplinaire de la notion d’ironie, l'analyse du contexte historique et culturel de L'Homme sans qualités comme « rapport ironique au réel » puis, enfin et surtout, l'analyse des signaux linguistiques et stylistiques propres à rendre l’ironie du texte. Les résultats de cette démarche se montrent particulièrement fructueux dans la mesure où le croisement des diverses approches possibles de l’ironie permet de cerner de façon plus exacte le sens de l’ironie musilienne mais aussi de comprendre de façon générale, à partir du texte de Musil, les mécanismes linguistiques de cette ironie. / What is « irony »? The multiple definitions of this concept given throughout history present such different phenomena that it is impossible to incorporate all the ideas of what we call « irony » into one. However we have come to the conclusion that it is in fact possible to divide the research carried out on this subject into three main fields which correspond with three distinct study domains: linguistic, literary and philosophical. We have found it interesting to try to approach this notion of irony globally, maybe not by finding a common denominator, but by verifying whether the different definitions of it can at least interact with one another. This study also covers the various perspectives of irony with the aim of reaching a more global concept of the phenomenon. We have tried to overcome the contradictions of the various theoretical definitions of the concept by giving priority to the empirical approach of the phenomenon given in the novel: The Man without qualities. The aim of our study is to determine whether it is possible to find evidence of linguistic « signs » of irony in the novel as a « relation to what is real ». Our research is based around three main axes: the multidisciplinary analysis of the notion of irony, an analysis of the historical and cultural context of The Man without qualities as an « ironical relation to what is real », and most importantly, an analysis of the linguistic and stylistic signs which add irony to the text. The result of this research is fruitful in so far as cross referencing the various possible approaches of irony has allowed us to not only determine more precisely the musilian meaning of irony but also to understand, based on Musil’s text, the linguistic mechanisms of irony in a more general sense.

Trata-se de um estudo comparativista entre as obras O Ateneu (1888) de Raul Pompéia e Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless (As Tribulações do Pupilo Törless) (1906) de Robert Musil. Sugere-se que esses romances filiam-se ao chamado Romance do Artista (Künstlerroman). Abordam-se também as concepções estéticas desenvolvidas pelos protagonistas dessas duas obras, além de ser uma tentativa de mostrar como ambos os romances se fundamentam numa visão estética da vida. / This is a comparative study about Raul Pompeia´s novel O Ateneu (1888) and Robert Musil´s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless (The Young Törless) (1906). I suggest these novels could be classified as Künstlerroman (Artist\'s Novel). I work with the aesthetical conceptions developed by each of one of the main characters in these two novels and try to show that both works are based on an idea of life as an aesthetical way of living.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Jennifer Drake Askey / When Robert Musil saw his book, Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless, published, he could not have seen the coming of fascist dictatorships. Despite this, two of Musil’s characters display characteristics that are hauntingly similar to characteristics common in the fascist Nazi movement in Germany and Austria, as well as protofascist groups such as the German Freikorps. By examining the characters of Beineberg and Reiting as well as their world in Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless through the lens of thinkers such as Theodor Adorno and Klaus Theweleit, one can find many similarities between Musil’s characters and the fascists of the coming years. Although Beineberg and Reiting cannot take Adorno’s F-scale, which measures the authoritarian personality of individuals, there are many instances in which these characters’ actions and the F-scale overlap. One also discovers striking similarities between the tendencies of Musil’s characters and the fascistic tendencies of the Freikorps and other groups described in Klaus Theweleit’s book, Male Fantasies.

This work explores a fascinating and disturbing literary trope found in select German Expressionist prose in the years 1910-1920. Key Expressionist-era authors, including Georg Heym, Robert Musil, Egmont Colerus and Franz Kafka employed Antarctic and ice metaphors in their poetry and prose to exemplify inner feelings of displacement resulting from modernity. Expressionist discontent, as well as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” that occurred from 1895 to 1922, led to the creation of polar dystopias in some literature. These dystopias explored abstract interpretations of the South Pole, not as a place of excitement and adventure, but rather as a journey into philosophical inner ice in the era of Modernism. Heym, Musil and Colerus did not invent the disturbing Antarctic allegory, but rather returned to an established literary tradition in a time of polar “pulp” fiction. This thesis first examines the South Pole as a place of emptying, shown in Georg Heym's 1911 fragment “Das Tagebuch Shakletons” (“Shakleton's Diaries”). In other works, such as Heym's 1911 novella “Die Südpolfahrer” (“Travelers to the South Pole”), the South Pole is portrayed as a blank slate. Two Austrian works show the idea of the South Pole as a refuge: Robert Musil’s 1911 Das Land über den Südpol (“The Land over the South Pole”) and Egmont Colerus’ 1915 novel Antarktis. These works exemplify and interpret the modern soul’s tepid “temperature,” something sharply criticized by Expressionists. These authors and poets longed to see an improved world and expressed discontent by portraying imperialist “heroes” of their time as mere specks lost in the sea of modernity. In the literature of Heym, Musil, Colerus and Kafka, a bleak Antarctic world mirrors the authors’ views on their “dying” society and the European “symptom” that resulted in suffocating mediocrity. Self-fulfillment becomes a static or moving point on the horizon that will never be realized by either the explorer or the freezing bourgeois soul.

This work explores a fascinating and disturbing literary trope found in select German Expressionist prose in the years 1910-1920. Key Expressionist-era authors, including Georg Heym, Robert Musil, Egmont Colerus and Franz Kafka employed Antarctic and ice metaphors in their poetry and prose to exemplify inner feelings of displacement resulting from modernity. Expressionist discontent, as well as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” that occurred from 1895 to 1922, led to the creation of polar dystopias in some literature. These dystopias explored abstract interpretations of the South Pole, not as a place of excitement and adventure, but rather as a journey into philosophical inner ice in the era of Modernism. Heym, Musil and Colerus did not invent the disturbing Antarctic allegory, but rather returned to an established literary tradition in a time of polar “pulp” fiction.This thesis first examines the South Pole as a place of emptying, shown in Georg Heym's 1911 fragment “Das Tagebuch Shakletons” (“Shakleton's Diaries”). In other works, such as Heym's 1911 novella “Die Südpolfahrer” (“Travelers to the South Pole”), the South Pole is portrayed as a blank slate. Two Austrian works show the idea of the South Pole as a refuge: Robert Musil’s 1911 Das Land über den Südpol (“The Land over the South Pole”) and Egmont Colerus’ 1915 novel Antarktis. These works exemplify and interpret the modern soul’s tepid “temperature,” something sharply criticized by Expressionists. These authors and poets longed to see an improved world and expressed discontent by portraying imperialist “heroes” of their time as mere specks lost in the sea of modernity. In the literature of Heym, Musil, Colerus and Kafka, a bleak Antarctic world mirrors the authors’ views on their “dying” society and the European “symptom” that resulted in suffocating mediocrity. Self-fulfillment becomes a static or moving point on the horizon that will never be realized by either the explorer or the freezing bourgeois soul.

Thèse de doctorat : Littérature comparée : Lyon 2 : 2001. Thèse de doctorat : Littérature comparée : Passau (Allemagne) : 2001. / Thèse soutenue en co-tutelle. Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr.

Focusing largely on the analysis of the representations of feelings and thoughts of literary characters or even the hidden “desires” of their authors, literary criticism for the most part has neglected to discuss the portrayal of the ‘inside’ of literary characters as a construction. Similarly, the critical discussion of texts by psychological theorists such as Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung attests to an oversight regarding the fact that they had to contend with the exact same challenge their colleagues in literature faced, namely the linguistic construction of a descriptive model for something singularly elusive and essentially non-verbal. The turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century in particular – just when the schools of Analytical Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Gestalt theory were emerging – proved to be a period in which literature responded to a particularly high popular interest in gaining insight into the supposed ‘inner world’ of literary characters. In pairing literary texts of that period by Richard Beer-Hofmann, Arthur Schnitzler, and Robert Musil with theoretical texts by Jung, Freud, and Robert Musil, this project examines the deployment of symbol, allegory and metaphor as well as the use of “Gestalten” – figures or shapes – in order to simulate the ‘inside.’ The first chapter examines the writings of C.G. Jung and Richard Beer-Hofmann’s novella, Der Tod Georgs (1900), for ways in which their respective construction of the ‘inside’ relies on the trope of symbol. The second chapter does the same in regard to allegory with the writings of Freud, specifically his Bruchstück einer Hysterie-Analyse (1905), and Arthur Schnitzler’s stream-of-consciousness novella, Fräulein Else (1924). The final chapter juxtaposes literary writings with psychological texts by the same author, Robert Musil, and demonstrates that the construction of the ‘inside’ in his novella, Die Vollendung der Liebe (1911), relies heavily on metaphors informed by his great familiarity with key ideas of Gestalt theory. In conclusion, this dissertation argues that the charting of inner human landscapes is essentially a narrative endeavor, in literature as in psychology.

Zugl.: Düsseldorf, Univ., Diss. u.d.T.: Scheel, Reiner: Vier Varianten literarischer Rechtsschelte um 1930

Zugl.: Hannover, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2006