The Man Without Qualities
question
role of comic devices in creating new insights
Sally
Nov 11, 2014 09:35AM
How does Musil use caricature, parody, satire, and other comic devices to give us a new understanding of Vienna in the years before World War I?
I laughed out loud as I read every page of this novel, reveling in his parodies of military, civilian, ecclesiastical and governmental characters as they planned a celebration for the 70th year of the reign of Emperor Franz Josef to be called "The Austrian World Peace Year 1918." Musil's great irony is that what was supposed to be a celebration o "peaceful imperial dominion" turns into total collapse--World War. We laugh our way to this horror, yet the laughter gives us insights into the reasons all this happened as no other approach could.
I laughed out loud as I read every page of this novel, reveling in his parodies of military, civilian, ecclesiastical and governmental characters as they planned a celebration for the 70th year of the reign of Emperor Franz Josef to be called "The Austrian World Peace Year 1918." Musil's great irony is that what was supposed to be a celebration o "peaceful imperial dominion" turns into total collapse--World War. We laugh our way to this horror, yet the laughter gives us insights into the reasons all this happened as no other approach could.
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