Narrative Durations: Time at the Intersection of Music and Twentieth-Century Literature

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dc.contributor.advisorRoof, Judithen_US
dc.contributor.committeeMemberCampana, Josephen_US
dc.creatorBoyd, Sydneyen_US
dc.date.accessioned2019-05-17T15:42:11Zen_US
dc.date.available2019-05-17T15:42:11Zen_US
dc.date.created2018-08en_US
dc.date.issued2018-05-31en_US
dc.date.submittedAugust 2018en_US
dc.date.updated2019-05-17T15:42:11Zen_US
dc.description.abstractSpanning British and American literature, “Narrative Durations: Time at the Intersection of Music and the Twentieth-Century Novel” defines the twentieth century as an era of experimentation with musical time. While most turn to philosophical and scientific paradigms to understand evolving conceptions of temporality in the twentieth century, authors and composers constitute vital interlocutors in that conversation. By examining novels in which music and temporality play essential roles, my dissertation posits that musical terms such as leitmotif, counterpoint, timbre, and overtone, which govern conceptions of time in a musical work, affect literary renditions of temporal perception. Such a study fosters a cross-disciplinary analysis where evocations of music transform a text, where the shared qualities of duration, rhythm, metric experience, and voice reap a distinctive formulation of reoriented literary time. Scholarly efforts to isolate musical experience manifest in layers of unproductive rhetorical disassociation that use metaphor and analogy to claim that James Joyce’s Ulysses is like a fugue for instance. In E. M. Forster’s 1927 narrative treatise Aspects of the Novel, he notes: “When people apply rhythm or pattern to literature they are apt not to say what they mean and not finish their sentences” (102). Here Forster addresses the problem of understanding musical import in twentieth-century literature overall, where assessing music in a text without a methodology of comparison means grappling with a stubborn, centuries-old paradox of contained disorder. “There is an imaginary in music whose function is to reassure, to constitute the subject hearing it,” as Roland Barthes writes in his 1977 study Image-Music-Text (179). Tracing the controlled imaginary of music in a text means accepting a transformation of contemporary awareness, where bodies exist in space and time, where one listens to and creates alternative environments that provoke new experiences, and in turn, where musical systems continually redefine what it means to be human.en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationBoyd, Sydney. "Narrative Durations: Time at the Intersection of Music and Twentieth-Century Literature." (2018) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105802">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/105802</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/105802en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectMusicen_US
dc.subjectmodernismen_US
dc.subjectoperaen_US
dc.subjectcross-disciplinaryen_US
dc.subjectAldous Huxleyen_US
dc.subjectE. M. Forsteren_US
dc.subjectWilla Catheren_US
dc.subjectRobert Ashleyen_US
dc.subjectRalph Ellisonen_US
dc.subjectSamuel Becketten_US
dc.subjectKathryn Davisen_US
dc.titleNarrative Durations: Time at the Intersection of Music and Twentieth-Century Literatureen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentEnglishen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.majorTwentieth-Century Literatureen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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