The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of IntermedialityThis volume is a pioneering study in the theory and history of the imitation of music in fiction and constitutes an important contribution to current intermediality research. Starting with a comparison of basic similarities and differences between literature and music, the study goes on to provide outlines of a general theory of intermediality and its fundamental forms, in which a more specialized theory of the musicalization of (narrative) literature based on contemporary narratology and a typology of the forms of musico-literary intermediality are embedded. It also addresses the question of how to recognize a musicalized fiction when reading one and why Sterne's Tristram Shandy, contrary to what has been previously said, is not to be regarded as a musicalized fiction. In its historical part, the study explores forms and functions of experiments with the musicalization of fiction in English literature. After a survey of the major preconditions for musicalization - the increasing appreciation of music in 18th and 19th-century aesthetics and its main causes - exemplary fictional texts from romanticism to postmodernism are analyzed. Authors interpreted are De Quincey, Joyce, Woolf, A. Huxley, Beckett, Burgess and Josipovici. Whilst the limitations of a transposition of music into fiction remain apparent, experiments in this field yield valuable insights into mainly a-mimetic and formalist aesthetic tendencies in the development of more recent fiction as a whole and also show to what extent traditional conceptions of music continue to influence the use of this medium in literature. The volume is of relevance for students and scholars of English, comparative and general literature as well as for readers who take an interest in intermediality or interart research. |
Contents
| 5 | |
| 11 | |
| 44 | |
word music structural and imaginary content analogies | 57 |
How to recognize a musicalized fiction when reading one | 71 |
HISTORY | 95 |
experiments with the musicalization of literature | 123 |
Modernist musicalization of fiction | 147 |
Postmodernist musicalization of fiction | 183 |
Postmodernist musicalization of fiction | 197 |
Summary | 229 |
Bibliography | 243 |
Index | 263 |
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The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of ... Werner Wolf Limited preview - 2023 |
Common terms and phrases
acoustic acoustic dimension aesthetic analogies to music appears attempts Bach's Beckett Beethoven's Burgess chap chapter characters concept context contrapuntal covert intermediality device discourse discussed dominant Dream Fugue elements emotional evidence evocation experience experimental fact foregrounding formal Fuga fuga per canonem fugal function genre harmony hetero-referentiality Huxley's idea imaginary content analogies imitate music imitation of music important indicative intertextuality Josipovici Joyce Joyce's language Laughing Song least meaning medial medium meta-aesthetic metafictional mimesis mimetic mise en abyme modernist movement music and literature musical form musicalization of fiction musicalized fiction musico-literary intermediality Napoleon Symphony narrative narrator novel particular passage perhaps Ping poetry Point Counter Point polyphony postmodernist Quarles question Quincey's reader reading referential relation Scher seen self-referential signifiers similar Sirens sonata form song specific story storytelling String Quartet structural analogies textual thematization of music theme traditional Tristram Shandy typical typology Ulysses variations verbal music Woolf word music
Popular passages
Page 144 - My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.
Page 48 - The resultant noise means something perhaps to the statistician, nothing to the artist. It is only by considering one or two parts at a time that the artist can understand anything. Here, for example, is one particular part ; and John Sebastian puts the case. The Rondeau begins, exquisitely and simply melodious, almost a folksong. It is a young girl singing to herself of love, in solitude, tenderly mournful. A young girl singing among the hills, with the clouds drifting overhead. But solitary as...
Page 154 - He also justifies experiment. Specimens of his work may illustrate other possible or impossible ways of telling a story. And if you have him telling parts of the same story as you are, you can make a variation on the theme. But why draw the line at one novelist inside your novel? Why not a second inside his? And a third inside the novel of the second?
Page 93 - If we listen to a symphony of Cimarosa, the present strain still seems not only to recall, but almost to renew, some past movement, another and yet the same ! Each present movement bringing back as it were, and embodying the spirit of some melody that had gone before, anticipates and seems trying to overtake something that is to come : and the musician has reached the summit of his art, when having thus modified the present by the past, he at the same time weds the past in the present to some prepared...
Page 121 - No one behind. She's passed. Then and not till then. Tram. Kran, kran, kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be.
Page 89 - If we sink into music our childhood comes back WITH ALL ITS HOPES AND ALL ITS OBSCURE REMINISCENCES AND WITH IT FAITH, A RELIANCE ON THE NOBLE WITHIN US ON ITS OWN TESTIMONY. WE FEEL OURSELVES moved so deeply as no object in mortal life can move us except by anguish, and here it is present with Joy. It is in all its forms still Joy.(84...
Page 93 - Each present movement bringing back as it were, and embodying the spirit of some melody that had gone before, anticipates and seems trying to overtake something that is to come : and the musician has reached the summit of his art, when having thus modified the present by the past, he at the same time weds the past in the present to some prepared and corresponsive future. The auditor's thoughts and feelings move under the same influence: retrospection blends with anticipation, and hope and memory,...
Page 88 - It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles— the' creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels.
Page 152 - You alternate the themes. More interesting, the modulations and variations are also more difficult. A novelist modulates by reduplicating situations and characters. He shows several people falling in love, or dying, or praying in different ways — dissimilars solving the same problem. Or, vice versa, similar people confronted with dissimilar problems.
Page 86 - Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.