Beyond the Sound Barrier: The Jazz Controversy in Twentieth-Century American Fiction

by Kristin K Henson

Overview

Beyond the Sound Barrier examines twentieth-century fictional representations of popular music-particularly jazz-in the fiction of James Weldon Johnson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, and Toni Morrison. Kristin K. Henson argues that an analysis of musical tropes in the work of these four authors suggests that cultural "mixing" constitutes one of the central preoccupations of modernist literature. Valuable for any reader interested in the intersections between American literature and the history of American popular music, Henson situates the literary use of popular music as a culturally amalgamated, boundary-crossing form of expression that reflects and defines modern American identities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415943000
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	03/28/2003
Series:	Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction Literature and the Jazz Controverys; Chapter 1 “A sympathetic, singing instrument”; Chapter 2 “A big sensation”, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jazz Anxiety; Chapter 3 Musical Range; Chapter 4 “Only in the head of a musician”; Conclusion;