For decades, Elfriede Jelinek has maintained her outstanding position in the literary field - the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 is the most telling evidence of this. But what constitutes its aesthetic relevance? The present study traces the innovative nature of Jelinek's work on the basis of different work phases from the first novel to the 21st century by correlating it with important literary developments of the last 50 years, from pop to internet literature. Only in a relational comparison does the originality of this 'impossible' aesthetic become fully visible. Jelinek's literature participates in the central discussions of the time and repeatedly surpasses the literary 'space of the possible' in surprising ways. In addition to re-reading important texts by the author, the volume presents stimulating research results on questions of intertextuality, intermediality, literary authorship and gender concepts.