Beschreibung:
Focusing on recent fictional and theoretical texts, Literary Music proposes literature, narrative fiction in particular, as a singular form of musical performance, in which ideas about music are constituted and explored. Stephen Benson considers works by Blanchot, Kazuo Ishiguro, Vikram Seth, and J. M. Coetzee, together with music by Elgar and Strauss. As such, Literary Music participates in the lively theoretical debate on the status of meaning in music.
Contents: Introduction: Music for Reading; 'Something familiar': reading Elgar; Voicing the libretto: David Malouf and Michael Berkeley; Quasi parlandoI: polyphony and musical value in Bakhtin and Kundera; Quasi parlando II: Blanchot and the silent narrative; Contemporary fiction and the music itself; Words without song: Kafka and The Unconsoled; Bibliography; Index.