Chapter VI: Sense and Sensuality in Törleß

Andrew Webber

From Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil (1990), pp. 101-33, doi:10.59860/td.c05241d

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Part of the book: Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil

Andrew Webber

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 30

Bithell Series of Dissertations 15

Modern Humanities Research Association for the Institute of Germanic Studies

ModernGermanPoetryFictionPhilosophyopen


Abstract.  By focusing my own reading firmly on the text, and, by extension, on the intertextual resonances between Musil's novel Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß and early writings of Freud, and to some extent Weininger's Geschlecht und Charakter, I set out not merely to question Reniers's unequivocal denial of the possibility of Freudian influence in the novel, which has since held sway in the secondary literature, but more importantly to show that, whatever its derivation, the sexual problematic has an essential role to play within the general aesthetic and ontological framework of Törleß.

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