»Ein in der Phantasie durchgeführtes Experiment«

The concept of Experiment seems to be an ambivalent topic in contemporary literary debate: on the one hand it is thought to be a mode concept of Naturalism and Avant-gardism related to the Sixties and Seventies. On the other hand, it has recently become a topic of particular interest. Indeed, literary research has all but focused on the concept of experimental literature, yet a convincing definition of this genre has not been yet formulated. The Experiment in literature can only be defined in a differential way: firstly, it always depends on a natural scientific concept of Experiment; secondly, an experimental literature develops itself from a classical tradition, after the latter has been recognized as such. The Experiment is therefore an unknown measure, an equation with at least two variables. This book offers some values, which try to fill the variables of this equation. It deals with authors as Emile Zola, Ernst Junger, Ernst Bloch, Gottfried Benn, Alfred Doblin, Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Weia, Hermann Broch, Robert Musil, Carlfriedrich Claus, Heiner Muller, H.M. Enzensberger, Oswald Wiener and the Wiener Gruppe, Helmut Heiaenbuttel, W.G. Sebald, Richard Beer-Hofmann, Durs Grunbein and Alexander Kluge. German text.