Abstract
In the thesis Literature Imagining Music, I ask what twenty selected works of late modern fiction imagine about Western music as an art form and a cultural practice. To underpin this main research question, I ask three additional questions concerned with (inter)mediality, musical genres and the position of the subject:
1) How can the selected literary text’s medial qualities enhance specific (imagined) qualities of Western music?
2) What do the selected literary texts imagine about Western art music and popular music?
3) What do the selected literary texts imagine about Western music from the perspective of the producer and receiver of music, respectively?
With these research questions, I position the thesis within the intermedial research field of Word and Music Studies (WMA). The thesis is primarily in dialogue with the aspect of the field influenced by Cultural Studies, and it contributes to this field theoretically, analytically and methodologically. The hypothesis that lies at the heart of the thesis is that literature understood as fiction produces a unique and overlooked aesthetic language about Western music that enhances specific cultural qualities of music in late modernity.
In the thesis’ Part One, I outline the research design. I review the research fields of Intermedial Studies and Word and Music Studies. This leads to my conceptualisation of ‘the imaginary’ that I frame and discuss before I introduce my position as postcritical and (post)phenomenological. These are my theoretical contributions to the field. In Chapter 2, I introduce my methodological and analytical contributions as the method of ‘mapping’ between close comparative readings and automated ‘distant readings’ of the corpus. Here, I show how I have mapped music in the corpus using the tool Nvivo, where I manually categorised all thematisations of music in the corpus. I also conduct the thesis’ first and most comprehensive text mining. With text mining, I quantitatively and automatically search for patterns of music keywords and their contexts in the corpus.
In Part Two, I develop the thesis’ analytical contributions through four analytical perspectives in four chapters. I demonstrate the results of my mapping strategy through a conceptual structure that focuses on how music is imagined through spatial, temporal, subjective and social categories. I focus on the different concepts that mediate music in the corpus across imagined musical genres (art music and popular music) and subject position (listener or producer of music).
In Chapter 3, “Imagining Music as Space”, I perform a close reading of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore (2002). Here, I introduce musical space as an analytical framework through phenomenology and atmosphere theory. I argue how fiction amplifies a quality of music to atmospherically configure a space in a subject’s perception.
In Chapter 4, “Imagining Musical Temporality”, I conduct a close reading of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010). Both novels have an experimental narrative (or temporal) construction and imagine music in many different historical settings. I argue how the novels imagine music through their literary flow of time. In these examples, fiction enhances a multiplicity of musical temporality between listeners and history, between intra-musical flows, subjective temporal experiences and social rhythms.
In chapter 5, “Imagining Music as Acts of Self Making”, I analyse music and subjectivity in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (1995) and Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music (1999). Though set in two very different musical worlds, both novels imagine music closely related to the protagonists’ emotional life and as a part of the character’s creation of identity through technology and personal taste. I discuss how the novels imagine music as a reference point in cultures and identities.
In the final Chapter 6, “Imagining Music as a Social Practice”, I connect all the previous analyses to the social or cultural musical space. I compare the two most musically dense and diverse novels in the corpus: Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing (2003) and Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999). These novels are set in entirely different musical social spaces, but their imaginaries of music are strikingly similar regarding concepts such as the genius, the musical industry and (national) belonging.
In conclusion, my thesis shows that what literature imagines about Western music in the corpus is the musical effects rather than sounds, for instance, emotional or bodily stimuli, subjective self-reflection or social change. Furthermore, such imagined effects of music are, in many cases, comparable across musical genres (popular music or art music) and narrative perspectives (listener, professional musician or amateur musician). The affordances of the literary medium enhance these imagined effects of music. I conclude the thesis by suggesting two further perspectives: 1) The possibility of viewing music in literature as a topos that my work has contributed significantly to outlining. 2) The possibility of developing a Postcritical Musicology where fiction invites an inclusive, postcritical discussion of Western music, lending a voice (and an ear) to music’s sensorial or cultural experiences.
1) How can the selected literary text’s medial qualities enhance specific (imagined) qualities of Western music?
2) What do the selected literary texts imagine about Western art music and popular music?
3) What do the selected literary texts imagine about Western music from the perspective of the producer and receiver of music, respectively?
With these research questions, I position the thesis within the intermedial research field of Word and Music Studies (WMA). The thesis is primarily in dialogue with the aspect of the field influenced by Cultural Studies, and it contributes to this field theoretically, analytically and methodologically. The hypothesis that lies at the heart of the thesis is that literature understood as fiction produces a unique and overlooked aesthetic language about Western music that enhances specific cultural qualities of music in late modernity.
In the thesis’ Part One, I outline the research design. I review the research fields of Intermedial Studies and Word and Music Studies. This leads to my conceptualisation of ‘the imaginary’ that I frame and discuss before I introduce my position as postcritical and (post)phenomenological. These are my theoretical contributions to the field. In Chapter 2, I introduce my methodological and analytical contributions as the method of ‘mapping’ between close comparative readings and automated ‘distant readings’ of the corpus. Here, I show how I have mapped music in the corpus using the tool Nvivo, where I manually categorised all thematisations of music in the corpus. I also conduct the thesis’ first and most comprehensive text mining. With text mining, I quantitatively and automatically search for patterns of music keywords and their contexts in the corpus.
In Part Two, I develop the thesis’ analytical contributions through four analytical perspectives in four chapters. I demonstrate the results of my mapping strategy through a conceptual structure that focuses on how music is imagined through spatial, temporal, subjective and social categories. I focus on the different concepts that mediate music in the corpus across imagined musical genres (art music and popular music) and subject position (listener or producer of music).
In Chapter 3, “Imagining Music as Space”, I perform a close reading of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore (2002). Here, I introduce musical space as an analytical framework through phenomenology and atmosphere theory. I argue how fiction amplifies a quality of music to atmospherically configure a space in a subject’s perception.
In Chapter 4, “Imagining Musical Temporality”, I conduct a close reading of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010). Both novels have an experimental narrative (or temporal) construction and imagine music in many different historical settings. I argue how the novels imagine music through their literary flow of time. In these examples, fiction enhances a multiplicity of musical temporality between listeners and history, between intra-musical flows, subjective temporal experiences and social rhythms.
In chapter 5, “Imagining Music as Acts of Self Making”, I analyse music and subjectivity in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity (1995) and Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music (1999). Though set in two very different musical worlds, both novels imagine music closely related to the protagonists’ emotional life and as a part of the character’s creation of identity through technology and personal taste. I discuss how the novels imagine music as a reference point in cultures and identities.
In the final Chapter 6, “Imagining Music as a Social Practice”, I connect all the previous analyses to the social or cultural musical space. I compare the two most musically dense and diverse novels in the corpus: Richard Powers’ The Time of Our Singing (2003) and Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999). These novels are set in entirely different musical social spaces, but their imaginaries of music are strikingly similar regarding concepts such as the genius, the musical industry and (national) belonging.
In conclusion, my thesis shows that what literature imagines about Western music in the corpus is the musical effects rather than sounds, for instance, emotional or bodily stimuli, subjective self-reflection or social change. Furthermore, such imagined effects of music are, in many cases, comparable across musical genres (popular music or art music) and narrative perspectives (listener, professional musician or amateur musician). The affordances of the literary medium enhance these imagined effects of music. I conclude the thesis by suggesting two further perspectives: 1) The possibility of viewing music in literature as a topos that my work has contributed significantly to outlining. 2) The possibility of developing a Postcritical Musicology where fiction invites an inclusive, postcritical discussion of Western music, lending a voice (and an ear) to music’s sensorial or cultural experiences.
| Bidragets oversatte titel | Litterære Musikforestillinger: En kortlægning af vestlig musik i et korpus af senmoderne skønlitteratur 1990-2010 |
|---|---|
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
| Status | Udgivet - jan. 2025 |
Emneord
- word & music studies
- comparative literature
- cultural musicology
- digital humanities
- intermediality