This book explores Robert Musil's Novellen to determine the significance of their roots in a generic tradition and to elucidate the ways in which they defined possibilities and marked limits of the genre. Musil's Novellen share the conventional narrative purpose of the tradition -- mediation of an unusual occurrence to a common understanding -- and its dominant characteristics -- tension between objectivity and subjectivity and the claim to convey 'truth.' Yet they participate in the modernist search for new modes of knowledge and expression.
