James Joyce and Absolute Music

by Michelle Witen, Erik Tonning (Editor), Matthew Feldman (Editor)

Overview

Drawing on draft manuscripts and other archival material, James Joyce and Absolute Music, explores Joyce's deep engagement with musical structure, and his participation in the growing modernist discourse surrounding 19th-century musical forms. Michelle Witen examines Joyce's claim of having structured the "Sirens+? episode of his masterpiece, Ulysses, as a fuga per canonem, and his changing musical project from his early works, such as Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Informed by a deep understanding of music theory and history, the book goes on to consider the "pure music+? of Joyce's final work, Finnegans Wake. Demonstrating the importance of music to Joyce, this ground-breaking study reveals new depths to this enduring body of work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350125193
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/22/2019
Series:	Historicizing Modernism
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Michelle Witen is Postdoctoral Teaching and Research Fellow at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Table of Contents

Series Editors' Preface

Introduction
1. Towards a Modernist Condition of Absolute Music
2. Joyce's Early Use of Music
3. Joyce's fuga per canonem: A Case of Structure
4. Joyce's fuga per canonem: A Case of Effect
5. Voided Fugue in "Circe"
6. "It's Pure Music": Finnegans Wake
Conclusion: Codetta or Da Capo?
Appendix: Table of Transcribed Fragments from MS 36,639/7A + 7B

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A densely argued examination ... For those readers who may not understand the notion of absolute music or even know what a fugue is, Witen explains her terms carefully and lucidly.
Times Literary Supplement

The scholarly heft of Witen's scrupulous archival work and detailed intellectual history will offer powerful categories ... for understanding the textures of Joyce's art.
The Review of English Studies

Witen shows herself to be a formidable textual scholar. She is also a wonderful reader of the 'Sirens' episode, suggesting that the episode itself has a voice.
James Joyce Literary Supplement

From the Publisher