Jorge Estrada B. is a doctoral candidate at the Peter Szondi-Institut of Comparative Literature at Freie Universität Berlin. He holds a Licentiate degree in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the Universidad Nacional de México. His research interests range from the construction of a narrative identity and hermeneutics of the subject to the question of rationality and mind and body relations in Renaissance philosophy.

The Experience of Ethics in "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy" by Laurence Sterne and "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften" by Robert Musil

This project explores how literary texts convey an ethical perspective that posits limits for the characters’ knowledge and actions. In their novels, L. Sterne und R. Musil weave with diverse motifs an intertextual dialogue where factual and mental repel or attract each other. They are in a state of incessant fluctuation that gives rise to a concept of life, or more precisely, a structuring principle that predetermines which contents can be used to give a biographical account. Life is thus the center around which the both novels explore issues such as, mind and body relations, rationality, and the criterion used to weigh ideas.