The collaboration of Schubert and the poet Wilhelm MÜller produced some of the best loved of nineteenth-century lieder--in particular Die schöne MÜllerin. Professor Youens shows how this archetypal tale of love and rejection is reflected in the poet s own experience. She considers other poets explorations of the subject and looks at other musical settings of MÜller s mill poems. Above all she examines MÜller s permutation of the literary legends as an exploration of erotic obsession delusion frenzy disillusionment and death and the way in which Schubert altered MÜller s vision when the poetic cycle became a musical text.