Modernist Frequencies: Literature, Music, Philosophy

Abstract

This is an interdisciplinary project that brings musicology to bear on a transatlantic study of modernist literature. It responds to and expands upon Raymond Williams's Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society by establishing its own group of keywords drawn from musical lexicon: silence, overtone, timbre, and counterpoint. I argue that these words should be considered fundamental concepts for literary studies, and investigate the musical aesthetics they represent as unique modes of William Jamesian radically empirical thought. I provide an intellectual history of the modernist musicians, writers, and thinkers who considered these musical features to be central to their work. In particular, I offer novel interpretations of the writing of a constellation of modernist authors rarely brought together: Henry James, Elizabeth Bishop, and Ralph Ellison.

Committee Chair

Anca Parvulescu

Committee Members

Steven Meyer, William Maxwell, Joseph Loewenstein, Vincent Sherry, Lutz Koepnick, Robert Snarrenberg

Comments

Permanent URL: https://doi.org/10.7936/K7Q52MK9

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

English and American Literature

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

Summer 8-15-2013

Language

English (en)

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS