Literature and music / / edited by Michael J. Meyer.

• Superior document: Rodopi perspectives on modern literature
• TeilnehmendeR: Meyer, Michael J., 1943-
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam ;, New York, NY : : Rodopi,, 2002.
• Year of Publication: 2002
• Language: English
• Series: Rodopi perspectives on modern literature.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (238 pages)

This collection of essays centers on musical elements that authors have employed in their work, thus joining heard sounds to a visual perception of their stories. The spectrum of authors represented is a wide one, from Pound to Durrell, from Steinbeck to Cather, from Beckett to Gaines, but even more unusual is the variety of musical type represented. Classical music (the quartet, the fugue, the symphony), Jazz (the jazz riff and jazz improv) and the spiritual all appear along with folk song and so-called random “noise.” Such diversity suggests that there are few limits when readers consider how great writers utilize musical styles and techniques. Indeed, each author seems to realize that it is not the type of music that s/he chooses to employ that is important. Rather, it is the realization that such musical elements as harmony, dissonance, tonal repetition and beat are just as important in prose composition as they are in poetry and song. The essayists have selected some works that may be considered obscure and some that are modern classics. Each one, however, has captured one of the varied ways in which words and music complement and enhance each other.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / Michael J. Meyer -- Introduction / Michael J. Meyer -- Music, Desire, and Death in The Magic Mountain / Michael J. Meyer -- Making Her Work Her Life: Music in Willa Cather’s Fiction / Michael J. Meyer -- The Enslaving Power of Folksong in Jean Toomer’s Cane / Michael J. Meyer -- Samuel Beckett’s Ping and Serialist Music Technique / Michael J. Meyer -- I Gotcha! Signifying and Music in Eudora Welty’s “Powerhouse” / Michael J. Meyer -- “Listening, listening”: Music and Gender in Howards End, Sinister Street and Pilgrimage / Michael J. Meyer -- Ernest J. Gaines and A Lesson Before Dying: The Literary Spiritual / Michael J. Meyer -- A Quartet that is a Quartet: Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet / Michael J. Meyer -- Music as a Locus of Social Conflict and Social Connection in Friedrich Torberg’s Süsskind von Trimberg / Michael J. Meyer -- A Defining Moment in Ezra Pound’s Cantos: Musical Scores and Literary Texts / Michael J. Meyer -- Harmonic Dissonance: Steinbeck’s Implementation and Adaptation of Musical Techniques / Michael J. Meyer -- Lady sings the Blues: Gayl Jones’ Corregidora / Michael J. Meyer -- About The Authors / Michael J. Meyer -- Abstracts of Arguments / Michael J. Meyer.