A Companion to the works of Robert Musil

Abstract

A panel of authors, critics, and academics convened by the Literaturhaus in Munich in 1999 voted Robert Musil's Man without Qualities the most important German novel of the 20th century. Their collective judgment rests on strong foundations: on the work's encyclopedic compass, embracing intellectual, social, political, and cultural concerns embodied in themes of striking originality; on its probing of key issues of Austrian and German life from the first four decades of the twentieth century; on the brilliance of its language, unsurpassed by any other 20th-century author writing in German.While this Companion gives Man without Qualities the central focus it deserves, it also contributes to a deeper understanding of Musil's other significant works; in harnessing a team of established scholars from North America and Europe to the task of providing an assessment of Musil's work, it sets new standards in scope and originality. The analyses are embedded in an appreciation of the intellectual contexts of Musil's writing, yielding fresh insights into Musil's artistic accomplishment and into his place in the Austrian and German cultural traditions of the 20th century.