This study is a thematic-descriptive investigation of the reproduction and transformation of norms in the theoretical discourse on the novel during the 1960s. Primary literature consists of articles and essays published in West German literary and cultural journals 1959-1967.

The term 'discourse' is applied partly in accordance with Busse/Hermanns/Teubert (1994), the term 'theory of the novel' chiefly in accordance with Lämmert (ed. 1984). 'Ideology' is not used in the sense of 'false ideology' hut rather as an umbrella term for various types of value-related statements. From this, the theory-of-the-novel discourse is perceived as an aesthetic-ideological discourse, containing statements directed at the contemporary novel which have clear programmatic function and significant thematic width.

The objective of the investigation is to show that specific comprehensive thematic fields - Werteverlust (breakdown and loss of values), Subjektproblematik (problematisation of the concept of the subject), Sprachproblematik (language related problems) and Realitätszerfall (reality loss, breakdown of the reality concept) - bear discursive significance as regards the discussion of literary norms during the 1960s, and that this discussion realises itself as two aesthetic-ideological discourses competing for interpretative precedence. The major issues are: Which reiterated patterns of argumentation, i.e. norm-related categories, concepts and rhetorical patterns, are used in the discourses for diagnoses and programmatic imperatives? How are the comprehensive thematic fields accentuated? What is treated, postulated or set aside as 'truth'? How - based on the above - is the novel formulated as a 'problem' ('crisis of the novel')?