Literary modernism and musical aesthetics

"This book examines the theory and the practice of music in relation to the writing of four major modernist figures: Walter Pater, Ezra Pound, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein. Brad Bucknell argues that in the nineteenth century, music was often invoked as the paradigm of transcendent art. For the modernists, however, late nineteenth-century debates about music's powerful but non-referential ability to make meaning became a significant focus for their written work. Bucknell examines Modernist writers' relationship and engagement with music - from theories about music and musical-literary relations to the composition of music and libretti - to show how music actually became another complex trope deployed in modernism's justification of its own aesthetic practice. Bucknell's study investigates how music, as a discrete artistic mode of expression and a recurring theme in the work of these four writers, reveals the intricate and varied nature of the modernist project."--Jacket.

First sentence: In the 1920s, while English modernism was at its peak, Paul Valery reflected back on the symbolist movement, the time of his own birth as a poet, and the source of great influence on many writers at work in the twenties.

Year

2001

Language

English

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

2

Pages

300

ISBN

9780521660280

Data source: Wikidata