The aim of the thesis is to produce an innovative definition of the self, based on the complexity of literary form. It is to be understood as a self within the autonomy and self-referentiality of the text. This self transcends every notion of the authenticity of the subject, and consequently avoids metaphysical definitions. Instead, it is viewed as an "objectified" textual creation, operating solely within the framework of fiction. Due to its unique and specific qualities, the self is also differentiated from the common quality of the subject. It is thus a self negatively defined as being both uncommon and incommesurate. Consequently, it is a self without a fixed identity. The incommesurate, and even incommunicable aspect of the self is here paradoxically regarded as part of the autonomy of the text. This implies that the self marks the very limit and self-framing of the text.

In Georg Büchner's Lenz the self is discussed in terms of insanity and silence; in Søren Kierkegaard's "The Diary of the Seducer" as a poetic self-creation without substance; in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra as an unresolved longing for a true self within language; and, finally, in Paul Valéry's "L'Ange" as a divided figure addressing itself within the aporetic structure of the poem.