Romansymphonik. Adornos 'Theorie des Romans'

Adorno was a passionate reader of novels throughout his life and published numerous essays on literature. However, it is not in his literary criticism essays, but rather in his later music philosophy that a theory of the novel is hidden in nuce. In poetological thought experiments, he compares Gustav Mahler's compositions with epic poetry, developing a material theory of form that paves the way for new aesthetic experiences – not least when reading novels. Claus Zittel takes up Adorno's approaches to a 'theory of the novel' derived from music and further develops his philosophical, musicological and literary ideas of form and genre theorems so that they can also conceptually grasp more recent developments in the narrative arts. In the process, Adorno's readings of novels and their contexts are traced and his judgements are fundamentally revised in the light of his own advanced definitions of form.