Considerazioni estetiche e metodo scientifico negli scritti critico-letterari di Robert Musil

Over the time, many scholars have focused on Robert Musil’s reflections on the relationship between literature and knowledge, deriving them mostly from his masterpiece "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften", his diary entries and his essays. Less attention has been paid to his literary and theatre reviews, so much so that, although there are some specific studies on Musil’s literary criticism, overall it still appears little explored how much the combination of soul and exactitude, aesthetics and science characterizes not only his literary production but, more generally, his idea of literature far beyond how he expressed it in his own works. This issue aims to shed light on this relationship and to indicate, on the basis of two significant examples, a new perspective of investigation for the literary critical production of the Austrian writer.