The Acoustic Self in English Modernism and Beyond: Writing Musically

This book explores the concept of the acoustic self in modernist English novels, drawing on the analogy between musical meaning-making and human subjectivity. It argues that musical characterization and structure are related to issues of subject-representation and addresses modernist dilemmas around selfhood and identity through three musical topics: fugue, absolute music, and Gesamtkunstwerk. Examples from the works of E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, and Virginia Woolf, as well as musicians such as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, and Wagner, are used to illustrate these inquiries. An additional chapter on jazz and electronic music extends the discussion beyond modernism, inciting further discussion and theorization of musical intermediality and recent sonic practices.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 138 pages
Publication date: 29 January 2024
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Drawing on the analogy between musical meaning-making and human subjectivity, this book develops the concept of the acoustic self, exploring the ways in which musical characterization and structure are related to issues of subject-representation in the modernist English novel. The volume is framed around three musical topics—the fugue, absolute music, and Gesamtkunstwerk—arguing that these three modes of musicalization address modernist dilemmas around selfhood and identity. Varga reflects on the manifestations of the acoustic self in examples from the works of E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, and Virginia Woolf, and such musicians as Bach, Beethoven, Handel, and Wagner. An additional chapter on jazz and electronic music supplements these inquiries, pursuing the acoustic self beyond modernism and thereby inciting further discussion and theorization of musical intermediality, as well as recent sonic practices.

Probing the analogies in the complex interrelationship between music, representation, and language in fictional texts and the nature of human subjectivity, this book will appeal to students and scholars interested in the interface of language and music, in such areas as intermediality, multimodality, literary studies, critical theory, and modernist studies.

Weight: 453g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032025858