The study outlines the main features of Otokar Fischer's literary historical work. It focuses his emphasis on the problem of discontinuity and difference in the history of literature.
Opposing the contemporary dominant syntesizing approach he treated his topics individually opening up his original training in philology to the challenges of psychoanalyis or the aesthetics of expression. He used these in his comparative studies to characterize border phaenomena reaching from the problems of dreams and synesthesia up to historical changes and permeation of styles.