Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Music; Literature; Philosophy'

Analisamos três canções de Heitor Villa-Lobos da série Serestas: Pobre Céga..., Realejo e Abril; utilizando os parâmetros filosóficos de Deleuze e Guattari, literários de Antônio Cândido e musicais de Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Demonstramos influências da música ocidental, da brasileira e a criatividade do compositor operando-as. Os poemas são parâmetros para basear nossas análises.
Analyzing three songs by Heitor Villa-Lobos from Serestas: Pobre Céga..., Realejo and Abril; we apply philosophical meaning by Deleuze & Guattari, literary by Antonio Candido and musical by Jean-Jacques Nattiez. We demonstrate occidental musics influence, some Brazilian ones and how the compositor operates them. The poems are parametrical source to built our seeing.

Music Composition
Ph.D.
The final piece of Dallapiccola’s “protest triptych” responding to Mussolinian fascism, Canti di Liberazione (1955) shows Dallapiccola’s abiding interest in author James Joyce’s work through its literary-inspired “simultaneity” and compositional strategies that suggest mixed temporalities (diverse temporal modes). This connection has significant implications on both the temporal and narrative forces at play within the work. Incorporating the work of philosophers such as Bergson and Adorno, I situate nonlinearity within the context of twentieth-century cultural life. Following Kern, I discuss the juxtaposition of distinct temporalities (simultaneity) in work such as Joyce’s Ulysses, which Dallapiccola adored, in addition to providing an overview of simultaneity in music. Next, I draw from Kramer and Reiner in examining the manifestations of linearity and nonlinearity in music. I explain how intertextuality has nonlinear implications and invites hermeneutic interpretation. Following Brown, I identify different types of symbolism and quotation in the work. Motivic elements such as the BACH cryptogram, musical references to Canti di Prigionia and Il Prigioniero, and structural symbolism such as palindromic gestures, are all crucial components of Liberazione’s unique temporal nexus. I explain how Dallapiccola’s intertextuality and compositional devices (such as retrograde, cross-partitioning, motivic recurrence, and rhythmic figuration) parallel Joyce’s techniques in Ulysses. Finally, I present a temporal analysis of Liberazione. Drawing from Kramer, I show how characteristics such as stepwise pitch relationships, homophony, and triadic gestures suggest linearity, while pedal points, “floating rhythm,” proportions, and polarity present nonlinearity. Moreover, I demonstrate how mixed temporalities (more than one temporal mode) operate within the work, and how linearity and nonlinearity exist at different structural levels. I explain how the recurring 01 dyad—a motivic minor second or major seventh—also manifests in the background stepwise descent of the work (F# to F), subverting the narrative transcendence of the conclusion. Ultimately, I categorize the work as an example of Kramer’s multiply-directed linear time, given its structural pitch connections and goal-directed teleology.
Temple University--Theses

This thesis places Chaucer within the tradition of philosophical poetry that begins in Plato and extends through classical and medieval Latin culture. In this Platonic tradition, poetry is a self-reflexive epistemological practice that interrogates the conditions of art in general. As such, poetry as metapoetics takes itself as its own object of inquiry in order to reinforce and generate its own definitions without regard to extrinsic considerations. It attempts to create a poetic-knowledge proper instead of one that is dependant on other modes for meaning. The particular manner in which this is expressed is according to the idea of the loss of the Golden Age. In the Augustinian context of Chaucer’s poetry, language, in its literal and historical signifying functions is an effect of the noetic fall and a deformation of an earlier symbolism. The Chaucerian poems this thesis considers concern themselves with the solution to a historical literary lament for language’s fall, a solution that suggests that the instability in language can be overcome with reference to what has been lost in language. The chapters are organized to reflect the medieval Neoplatonic ascensus. The first chapter concerns the Pardoner’s Old Man and his relationship to the literary history of Tithonus in which the renewing of youth is ironically promoted in order to perpetually delay eternity and make the current world co-eternal to the coming world. In the Miller’s Tale, more aggressive narrative strategies deploy the machinery of atheism in order to make a god-less universe the sufficient grounds for the transformation of a fallen and contingent world into the only world whatsoever. The Manciple’s Tale’s opposite strategy leaves the world intact in its current state and instead makes divine beings human. Phoebus expatriates to earth and attempts to co-mingle it with heaven in order to unify art and history into a single monistic experience. Finally, the Nun’s Priest’s Tale acts as ars poetica for the entire Chaucerian Performance and undercuts the naturalistic strategies of the first three poems by a long experiment in the philosophical conflict between art and history. By imagining art and history as epistemologically antagonistic it attempts to subdue in a definitive manner poetic strategies that would imagine human history as the necessary knowledge-condition for poetic language.

Trata-se de matérias e da escrita. E especialmente de matérias de escrita. Trata-se do texto. Do estilo. Da língua, do sentido, das formas e da linguagem. Trata-se do ritmo. Do ritmado. De conteúdos, substâncias e expressões. Trata-se de procedimentos. De sonoridades e de refrões. De sons organizados e ruídos. Trata-se do que trata a literatura. E também a música. A pintura. O cinema. A poesia. E também a filosofia. O cotidiano. A educação. Trata-se de fixar alguns eixos. De traçar alguns contornos. Delimitar alguns meios. De manter algumas posturas. Trata-se de construções e de fugas. De pontos e de linhas. De Deleuze e de Guattari. De Barthes, Beckett, Kafka, Rilke, Flaubert e Manoel de Barros. De Schulz, Hjelmslev, Klee, Blanchot e Céline. E também de Fante, Ponge, Cage, Miles Davis e Bukowski. Trata-se do que se encontra nas coisas. De ínfimos pedaços disso tudo e sobretudo do resto. Da ruína. Do silêncio. Dos abismos e da desconstrução. Trata-se do inominável. Dos limites. De alguns tensores e de conexões e suspensões. Trata-se da despalavra e da palavra ágrafa. Do instante-nada das coisas todas quando distantes da usura da vida. Trata-se do indiferenciado e de sua maleabilidade. Do impossível e de alguma outra possibilidade. Do cansaço e da desistência. Do uso e de seu inverso. Do esgotamento e da criação.
It refers to matters and writing. And especially writing matters. It refers to the text. The style. The language, sense, shapes. It refers to rhythm. The rhythmic. To content, substance and expressions. It refers to procedures. To sonorities and choruses. To organized sounds and noises. It refers to which literature relates to. And also music. Painting. Cinema. Poetry. And also philosophy. Daily life. Education. It refers to fixing some axles. Tracing some outlines. Delimiting some means. Maintaining some postures. It refers to constructions and escapes. Dots and lines. To Deleuze and Guattari. To Barthes, Beckett, Kafka, Rilke, Flaubert and Manoel de Barros. To Schulz, Hjelmslev, Klee, Blanchot and Céline. And also to Fante, Ponge, Cage, Miles Davis and Bukowski. It refers to what is found in things. To insignificant pieces of it all and above the rest. Ruin. Silence. Abysms and deconstruction. It refers to the untamable. To limits. To some tensors and connections and suspensions. It refers to wordless and nonliterate word. To the nothing instant of all things, distant from the usury of life. It refers to the undifferentiated and to its malleability. The impossible and some other possibility. Tiredness and desistance. Use and its inverse. Depletion and creation.

This dissertation analyzes the representations of immigrants from North Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in Spain. As engaged scholarship, it seeks to better the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media through the study of literature, film, and music about immigration spanning from the year 2000 to 2016. Because misconceptions continue to propagate in the media, this dissertation works to counteract anti-immigrant, xenophobic representations as well as balance out overly positive and orientalized portrayal of immigrants with a call to recognize immigrants as human beings who deserve the same respect, dignity, and rights as any other citizen. Chapter 1 examines and analyzes the background to immigration in Spain by covering demographics, the mass media, and political theories related to immigration. Chapter 2 analyzes Spanish music about immigration through Richard Rorty’s social theory of ‘sentimental education’ as a meaningful way to redescribe marginalized minorities as full persons worthy of rights and dignity. Chapter 3 investigates the representation of immigrants in Spanish filmic shorts and cinema. Lastly, Chapter 4 demonstrates how literary portrayals of immigrants written by undocumented immigrants can give rise to strong characters that avoid victimization and rear empathy in their readers in order to affect a social change that minimizes cruelty.

A partir du concept « philosophie tragique », nous proposons une approche de l’ensemble de la philosophie de Rosset, qui a jusqu’ici peu été étudiée en France. Nous envisageons le rapport, dans son œuvre, entre philosophie tragique et esthétique à partir de ses analyses d’œuvres d’art dramaturgiques, littéraires et musicales. Pour ce faire, nous analysons le terme même de tragique, la fortune du drame antique et l’usage que propose Nietzsche de la tragédie pour déterminer la ligne philosophique propre à Rosset. Nous proposons ainsi une cartographie de l’ensemble de son œuvre pour analyser les nouvelles tactiques qu’il met en œuvre pour renouveler l’approche du tragique, et par là, pour évaluer la manière de philosopher singulière qu’il met en œuvre. Analysant dans ses premiers travaux le tragique à travers une analyse de l’événement tragique et de son expérience individuelle, Rosset élargit son champ de réflexion pour faire du tragique l’objet d’une philosophie du réel. Ce tournant dans son œuvre nous amène à penser le tragique non comme une question circonstancielle ou réservée à l’analyse dramaturgique ou esthétique mais comme le programme d’une nouvelle philosophie, qui conteste l’idée de nature, et propose une nouvelle philosophie du réel. En précisant cette philosophie comme « logique du pire », « anti-nature » et philosophie du hasard, nous confrontons ainsi ses ouvrages de la maturité avec son premier geste philosophique, qui détermine la philosophie comme tragique. Cela nous amène à distinguer le tragique de l’absurde et du pessimisme, en insistant sur le rapport paradoxal à la joie qu’il comporte, qui détermine le tragique comme une philosophie de l’approbation. Le rôle que tiennent la littérature et la musique est alors évalué à la lumière de cette nouvelle rencontre, que Rosset nous propose, entre une esthétique de l’artifice et une éthique de l’approbation tragique. Nous espérons ainsi contribuer à l’ouverture en France d’une réception de la philosophie de Clément Rosset
Starting from the concept of “tragic philosophy”, we offer a complete analysis of the complete philosophy of Rosset, up to now little studied in France. We contemplate the link in his work between tragic philosophy and the arts, based on his analysis of works of dramatic art, literature and music. In doing this, we analyse even the term ‘tragic’ itself, the fortune of ancient drama and the usage of tragedy proposed by Nietzsche, in order to establish the philosophical approach that belongs to Rosset. We thus present a mapping of the whole of his works in order to analyse the new tactics that he puts to work in order to re-invent the approach to tragic, and in this manner, evaluate the singular manner of the philosopher that he puts to work. Analysing in his earliest works on tragic by means of the tragic event and his personnel experience, Rosset then enlarges his field of reflexion to make tragic the object of the philosophy of reality. This twist in his work brings us to think not of the tragic as a circumstantial question or the reserve of the dramatical or artistic analysis but as the plan for a new philosophy, which contests the idea of nature, and offers a new philosophy of reality. By clarifying this philosophy as the « logic of the worst », « anti-nature » and the philosophy of chance, we thus consider his works with the maturity of his first philosophical gesture that sets out the philosophy as tragic. This method in his work leads us to distinguish the absurd tragic from that of pessimism, whilst insisting on the paradoxical link of the joy that it brings, that determines the tragic as a philosophy of approval. The role played by literature and music is thus evaluated in the light of this new encounter that Rosset proposes to us, between an art of the subtle and the ethics of tragic approval. We hope in this manner to contribute to opening France up to the philosophy of Clément Rosset
Esta tesis tiene como objetivo comprender y precisar los términos a partir de los cuales Clément Rosset retoma y reelabora el termino filosofía trágica. Para hacerlo, hemos hecho una travesía que abarca el conjunto de su obra, para así hacer visibles los diferentes estratos que conforman este concepto. En primer lugar, la filosofía trágica de la que Rosset nos habla en sus libros de juventud aparece a une escala humana: él se interroga sobre el acontecimiento trágico y la relación del humano con ese tipo de situaciones. El describe, por tanto, el sujeto trágico que se sorprende cada vez que esas situaciones aparecen. Su elaboración no solamente su nutre y está ligada definitivamente a Nietzsche, sino también a las tragedias antiguas y modernas, reforzando así el lazo entre estética y filosofía. En segundo lugar, Rosset extiende su visión de lo trágico al mundo. Así él nos invita a pensar en la actividad misma de la materia, lo cual implica que no solamente el individuo es trágico sino el mundo en su totalidad. En este momento de la reflexión es necesario precisar que Rosset no comprende lo trágico como el “hecho lamentable”, sino que su visión es mucho mas compleja, puesto él debe entenderse como el “indeterminismo” que acompaña cada acto de nuestra vida y la actividad del mundo en su conjunto. Así una filosofía trágica se dedica a pensar ese ingrediente crucial, el “indeterminismo”, de donde surgen todos los determinismos que vemos y habitamos constantemente: los acontecimientos y los seres (animados e inanimados). En tercer lugar, si Rosset instaura una nueva concepción de lo trágico, ella va permitirle, algunos años más tarde, conducir su reflexión hacia lo “real”. Es así que la palabra “trágico” se diluye, pero no su sentido, el “indeterminismo”, el cual se incrusta en el centro mismo de sus reflexiones sobre lo real. Vemos así como Rosset desliza su pensamiento hacia una filosofía de lo real que por tanto es completamente equiparable a la filosofía trágica de sus primeros libros. Eso no significa que la reflexión de Rosset permanezca estática, todo lo contrario, ella es muy activa - pero guardando una profunda coherencia -, puesto que se dedica a reformular el problema de lo real, esta vez a partir del “indeterminismo”, que aparecerá como la verdadera “naturaleza” de lo real. Finalmente si la filosofía de Rosset se dedica pensar lo real, su solo objetivo es proponernos una reconciliación con lo inmediato, con el empirismo de las cosas que nos rodean. De esta manera su filosofía es una celebración de lo real, la cual también podría leerse como una celebración del “indeterminismo”. Para garantizar mejor nuestra cohabitación con lo real, Rosset la refuerza a través de un campo de sensaciones provenientes de la música y la literatura. Es así que una filosofía de lo real, puede mejor comprenderse por las sensaciones que nos producen estas manifestaciones estéticas. De esta manera Rosset conserva el lazo entre filosofía y estética que habíamos descubierto al comienzo de su reflexión sobre lo trágico

Cette thèse présente la première monographie française sur le grand écrivain russe et sibérien Victor Astafiev. Peu traduite en français, son œuvre importante (15 volumes) est généralement considérée par la critique comme s’inscrivant dans la veine de la prose rurale qui se développa en Russie à partir des années 70. Cependant, la biographie de l’écrivain et la multiplicité des thèmes qu’il aborde (société, guerre, musique, sons et nature) impose une remise en question de cette interprétation. L’auteur de la thèse s’attache à analyser finement les textes mis en contexte, à étudier l’évolution et la spécificité linguistique de leur écriture pour situer Astafiev dans la tradition de la grande littérature russe et faire apparaitre la profondeur et l’actualité de ses écrits. Le volume II livre une série de traductions inédites, annotées et commentées, ainsi que les versions reconstituées de chansons dont les textes révèlent un trésor de la culture populaire de l’époque
This thesis presents the first French monograph on the great Russian and Siberian writer, Viktor Petrovich Astafiev. His important work (15 volumes), little-translated into French, is generally praised by critics as taking place within the same framework of the Village Prose, which started growing in Russia from the seventies onwards. However, the biography of the writer and the multiple themes which he takes up (society, war, music, sounds and nature) call into question this interpretation. The thesis author attempts to carry out a shrewd analysis of the texts placed within their context and to study the linguistic development as well as the specificity of Astafiev writings in order to situate him in the tradition of the great Russian literature and to highlight the depth and the topicality of his work. The second volume delivers a whole series of unpublished translations, duly annotated and commented as well as restored versions of songs, the texts of which reveal a treasure of the popular culture in the context of that time

Croisant deux sphères artistiques dont les relations ont été quelque peu ignorées et dont les antagonismes ont été parfois fantasmés, cette étude se propose d'analyser les résonances croisées, fécondes et réciproques existant entre le rock et la littérature. Ouvrant un champ de recherche quasiment vierge, elle est confrontée à l'instabilité d'un mot insaisissable (le rock) qui est peut-être en cela une métaphore de l'imaginaire contemporain. Critique et vecteur du spectacle, bruit apparemment informe dont il est difficile de parler, le rock résonne dans les productions littéraires comme il est influencé par elles. A l'aune de cette problématique, nous avons cherché à manifester un espace littéraire à l'écoute du rock, espace hétérogène constitué par des rock-fictions ou fictions du rock, la critique rock, les écrits des artistes, une poésie électrique ou encore des oeuvres littéraires sans cesse citées par les musiques populaires. Outre une cartographie de cet espace, nous avons observé la manière dont les textes fantasment leur proximité, leur appartenance ou leur rejet du rock et, ou, du littéraire, dans autant d'échos et de distorsions poétiques, esthétiques et axiologiques. Dès lors, eu égard à la disparité formelle du rock et à sa volatilité sémantique, cette analyse dépasse nécessairement les bornes d'une réflexion musico-littéraire. La métaphore de l'écoute qui l'a guidé ne vise donc pas (simplement) à réconcilier amateurs ou littératures des musiques savantes et des musiques populaires, mais elle est le modèle d'une posture d'écoute qui conjugue aussi bien la distraction face aux résonances (littéraires) du rock que l'attention face aux dissonances du réel

British singer/songwriter Elvis Costello once said, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s a really stupid thing to want to do” (in Brackett, 1995, p. 157). In this thesis I talk not only about music but I also talk about talk about music, perhaps an even stupider thing to want to do. But I do so because recent critical discourses in musicology and music education suggest talk about music is an inherent part of music, such that if we talk about music at all we must additionally talk about talk about music. But in talking about talk about music we are called upon to talk about talk. Consequently this thesis divides into five parts. In Part I I talk about talk with a discussion of performativity. I outline three different conceptions of the performative, showing how ethics inheres in language, with talk about talk necessarily being talk about ethics to some extent. In Part II I talk about talk about music, showing how musicology has attempted to respond to this ethical dimension of talk with a “new” musicology. In Part III I write in a number of different genres, exploring the discursive norms governing genres of writing about music and musicians and how they impact what we take music to be. Thus I write in philosophical, ethnographic, genealogical, narratological, autobiographical and literary forms, concluding that literary writing on music and musicians acts as a meta-discourse on music, bringing multiple different discourses into dialogue within a single unified text. In Part IV I explore the implications of literary writing about music and musicians for the practice of music education with critical readings of four novels, concluding with the recommendation that a “Non-foundational approaches to music education” course be offered as part of music teacher education programs, in addition to the more traditional “Foundational approaches to music education” course. In Part V I provide two annotated bibliographies for teachers interested in teaching such a course and for those who simply wish to further their understanding of music and music education through critical engagement with literary texts about music and musicians.

This dissertation explores the relationship between the critique of Jena romanticism and Beethoven's "neue Manier" in the context of the material conditions that shaped European modernity around 1800. By taking as a case study the piano sonatas Op. 31, each chapter examines from a different perspective what represents a key historical moment in the genealogy of the modern notions of musical form and experience. The underlying thesis is that instrumental music was legitimized via a massive epistemic transfer of values from the domain of the literary. From its integration into the economy of the literary, instrumental music acquired an unstable epistemic condition introduced in Chapter 2 as the "materiality of the literary." The theory of romantic irony serves as a methodological point of entry to scrutinize how musical practice, literary discourse, and socio-historical transformations collided and converged to reframe aesthetic experience. Through their critique, the Jena romantics complicated the relationship between the generic and the particular and upheld the preeminence of practice over theory in the art of modernity. Tracing connections between Beethoven's music and the literary, Chapter 4 suggests a structural homology between the novel, as paradigmatic form of literary modernity, and sonata form, as the main compositional strategy of the classical style. Both forms are seen as practices driven by a principle of openness toward difference that emerges within the formation of the literary. The formal approach Beethoven initiates with the sonata forms fashioned in Op. 31 will be recast in Chapter 5 as a self-reflexive manifestation of that principle within the interpretive framework offered by romantic irony. By virtue of the formalist thought of the literary, Beethoven's instrumental forms became aesthetic symbols of the modern self.

This dissertation explores the meaning of art and religion in fin-de-siècle Vienna through the symphonies of the composer Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and the philosophical and dramatic works of the poet Siegfried Lipiner (1856-1911). Using as a framework aesthetic discourses concerning the ability of music to be "read" as a narrative text, this study highlights the significant role of both poet and composer in the cultural and intellectual world of Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century. In this study, I compare and contrast Lipiner's vision of religious renewal with the redemptive narratives in the programs of Mahler's first four symphonies, which were composed during a period when the poet and composer shared a close friendship and intellectual exchange. Furthermore, I also discuss Mahler and Lipiner's works in relation to the writings of the Polish Romantic poet, Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1835), the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and the composer and cultural critic, Richard Wagner (1813-1883), demonstrating how the images of the heroic martyr, the Übermensch and the Volk, play a role in the re-conception of man's relationship to the divine, which is central to Mahler and Lipiner's idea of redemption. However, I also claim that the political and cultural climate of Vienna around 1900 played an important role in their interpretation of these ideas. Despite their public conversion and cultural assimilation, Mahler and Lipiner's Jewish heritage distinctly shaped their interest in artistic-religious redemption both to cope with their own personal feelings of alienation in the society in which they lived, and as a cure for the existential malaise of their time. This study demonstrates not only the significant impact of Lipiner's aesthetic-religious philosophy on Mahler's music, but also portrays their vision of redemption as an re-envisioning of man's relationship to God, which stands in contrast to the modern trend of secularism, and reflects a little-explored dimension of aesthetic and religious culture in fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Dissertation

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Antonia Darder. Includes supplementary digital materials. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 243-256) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

As Written presents an investigation of selected literary configurations of musical ineffability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By putting literary parables into constellation with media technologies and texts from philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, and media theory, the dissertation seeks to better understand the ways in which literature engages, discloses, disrupts, and determines musical discourse at times of aesthetic, political, and technological shift. The dissertation begins by establishing the “cryptographic” ineffable that emerges in early German Romanticism through readings of Novalis. These readings suggest this formulation of ineffability to arise out of an instrumentalization of instrumental music that emphasizes the symbolic relations of musical notation over music’s sound—this in service of a literary and philosophical project that strives to transcend its own medial and epistemological limits. Subsequent chapters will analyze alternative configurations of ineffability in writings by Richard Wagner, Theodor Adorno, Thomas Mann, and Helmut Lachenmann, but vestiges of this “originary” Romantic configuration will remain. Indeed, while the literary texts analyzed in these later chapters will respond to the medial, technical, and technological developments of their historical contexts, more than merely disclosing discursive formulations of musical ineffability, they, like Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen, will be shown to enact these formulations in forms of linguistic, sonic, and material absence through their complex narratologies and poetologies. How, this dissertation will ask, might literature’s ability to accommodate changing contexts in these configurations ultimately suggest musical ineffability as a conduit through which a music-discursive tradition that emerges in literature around 1800 is able to preserve itself into the twentieth century?

This thesis is a study of the shifting philosophical trends in the works of Samuel Beckett, Donald Barthelme, and Kurt Vonnegut as representations of a greater shift from modernism to postmodernism. I have chosen to explore Beckett's plays Waiting for Godot and Krapp's Last Tape, Barthelme's short stories "Nothing: A Preliminary Account," "The New Music," and "Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegal," and Vonnegut's book Timequake to see how each author seeks to find a new hope in the face of a collapsed causal system. This work is an examination of the form and content of each author's work as it pertains to their own philosophical standing and in relation to the other two authors' works. I argue that each author finds a different hope for humanity depending on their place among the philosophical trends during their time.
Graduation date: 2012

In this study on literature and thought from the early 20th century, I examine techniques of organization – including rhetoric, poetics and citation – across the work of the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) and the Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880-1942). With particular attention to Cassirer’s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms and Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, this dissertation analyzes the prose strategies, by which the authors develop a poetics of orientation. Responding to shifts in the epistemological foundations of the empirical sciences, the authors reimagine genre and style as a way to direct the reader in the interpretive process. Although the inflection of this poetics of orientation differs in Cassirer’s cultural philosophy and Musil’s essays and narrative, they both follow dynamic moments in thought, the drama that unfolds as the interpersonal experience of making sense of the world. The displacement of substance by function in the sciences provides the shared ground against which the patterns of their prose emerge. In the first section, “Ernst Cassirer. Problemgeschichte: from genre to texture”, I engage Cassirer’s shift from a critique of reason to a critique of culture, in which language and myth are treated alongside theoretical knowledge as interfaces for knowing the world. His mode of thought develops in a mode of writing, modifying the philosophical genre Problemgeschichte, which developed in the 19th century and was the dominant mode of philosophy among Neo-Kantians at the turn of the 19th to 20th century. He extends the genre’s diction of direction, such as the ubiquitous terms Richtung and Weg, with a decidedly mathematical accent. This figural register reflects the epistemic shift from substance to function, which also typifies his characterization of problems as sites of discursive interference. Building on this discussion of the philosophical genre Problemgeschichte, I then analyze narrative aspects of Cassirer’s writing, such as focalization, in order to understand how his play of citation demonstrates functional thinking. In the second section, “Orientation: Robert Musil’s Reise vom Hundertsten ins Tausendste”, I follow Musil’s prose detours as an intentional gambit, connecting heterogeneous intellectual inquiry. Arguing that his prose innovation cannot be exhausted by a discussion of his essayistic style, I challenge standard accounts of the dissolution of narrative in Musil’s writing. The shift from substance to function as the epistemological foundation in the empirical sciences informs Musil’s displacement of narrative schema by narrative impulses, which preserves traces of traditional story telling as devices for helping the reader find their way in a textual space. Both Cassirer’s and Musil’s poetics of orientation demonstrate engagement with the tumultuous Interwar period, which counters anti-Enlightenment tendencies of intellectual inquiry, common in the German-language cultural production of the early 20th century. The authors’ prose strategies are the vehicle for an intellectual vision, which maintains the potential for an open future.