The Acoustic Self in English Modernism and Beyond Writing Musically

• Main Author: Varga, Zoltan
• Format: eBook Book
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2022; Taylor and Francis; Western Norway University of Applied Science; Taylor & Francis
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Aldous Huxley; E.M. Forster; English literature > 20th century > History and criticism; English modernist fiction; Grammar & Language Usage; Interdisciplinary Literary Studies; intermediality; Language; Language and Communication; Language and Linguistics; Language Arts; Language Arts & Disciplines; Language: reference and general; Linguistics; literary studies; Literature & Language; Literature, Modern > 20th century > History and criticism; Modernism; modernist studies; Multimodality; Music > Philosophy and aesthetics; Music and literature; Music in literature; musical semiotics; musicalization; narrative fiction; Nonfiction; Semiotics; subjectivity; Virginia Woolf; Zoltan Varga; English modernist fiction; Virginia Woolf; Young Man; Point Counter Point; literary studies; High Risk Suicide Group; Beethoven's Music; Esthesic Levels; Multifarious Paths; EDM; musical semiotics; Howards End; Zoltan Varga; narrative fiction; Main Character; intermediality; Aldous Huxley; Absolute Music; subjectivity; Queen's Hall; multimodality; Fugal Structure; Act Iii; Trip City; Backward Facing; Judas Priest; Arbitrary Association; Musical Intertextuality; Composer's End; Musical Embodiment; modernist studies; Longest Journey; Wagner's Parsifal; E.M. Forster; semiotics; musicalization; Humpback Whales; English Modernism
• ISBN: 9781000538403; 1000538400; 9781032025841; 1032025840; 1032025859; 9781032025858; 9781003184034; 1003184030; 9781000538472; 1000538478
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003184034

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.