This dissertation examines the language of force in Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (MoE) as a site of literary self-reflection. It investigates how the text employs a constellation of “force” terms – including not only the words Kraft, Energie, and Leistung, but also images of physical and chemical forces such as heat, and electromagnetic force fields – to construct images of its own procedures and effects. The dissertation’s point of departure is the suggestive image of “likeness-force” (Gleichniskraft) in chapter 116 of MoE that compares the interpretive process of reducing a likeness (Gleichnis) to a univocal concept to the physical process of boiling down (auskochen) a foaming solution in order to stabilize it – losing the forces of its most volatile elements in the process. Interpreting the novel from the perspective of the image of likeness-force, this dissertation addresses problems that arise from it: what is this force? What are its effects? How does it distinguish the “figurative” language of Gleichnisse from the “discursive” language of concepts? How is it “like” and “unlike” the physical force that it is compared to? These questions have important implications for interpreting the novel’s ethical and political engagement – a problem that has polarized MoE scholarship during the past several decades and that touches upon broader questions concerning the effects of literary language. Does “likeness-force” include the capacity to transform the reader’s ethical and political ideas? Or does such an “applied” reading constitute a “boiling down” of literary language that reduces “likeness-force?” I will argue that likeness-force lies primarily in the text’s capacity to generate a multiplicity of possible interpretations that attract and resist the reader’s desire for univocal significance. Subsequently, the text constitutes a Gefilz von Kräften: a tangle of forces that precludes the certainty of linear order but also constitutes its own unity – just as the etymologically linked image of “felt” is an aggregate of matted fibers that also constitutes a smooth surface.

Creator

• Agins, Jonathan

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-2qzy-4976

Subject

• German literature

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• etdadmin_upload_639788
• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:14524

Keyword

• Musil
• Literature
• Kraft
• Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
• The Man Without Qualities
• Force

Date created

• 2019-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright