Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte Masterproef Taal- en Letterkunde Master Engels Music in the Fiction of Richard Powers Pim Verheyen Promotor: Professor Luc Herman Assessor: Professor Geert Lernout Universiteit Antwerpen Academiejaar 2011-2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the impact of Professor Luc Herman, who has been an inspirational mentor. His advice and careful readings have seen the thesis through to this stage. He guided my textual analysis in directions that I would not have discovered on my own and challenged me to think through and refine my ideas into a compelling, well-argumented text. A special thanks to Professor Geert Lernout, who generously agreed to help guide this project. During my studies at the University of Antwerp, he provided valuable advice that helped me to view the analysis of literature in a different perspective. A number of friends and family members stand out for their ongoing encouragement and support they gave. They have my undying gratitude. Dad, thank you for your unconditional support and for always believing in me. I could not have wished for a better sister than Dobby, who has been a great source of inspiration for me. Frank, little brother, thank you for your advice and your patience. Hobbs, I would not trade you away for all the tea in China! Your loving character is exactly what I needed. Many thanks go to Dario Zicari for being such a good friend. We talked for hours about music and literature, and these conversations were not only enjoyable but also educational. Hein Zegers, thank you for your encouragement and for helping me with the German translations of various compositions. And last, but by no means least, I would like to thank my oldest friend, Joeke Bouckaert, whose optimism has helped me through some tough stages of this writing process. The inquisitive nature of her one-year-old son, Ubbe, has been a constant reminder of why I like studying in the first place: the wonder of discovering new things. In short, Joeke’s home has frequently been a place of comfort, but also a place where I could refresh my spirits. Thank you. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 INTRODUCTION 5 A. THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS 20 1. “The World is Only Translation” 20 2. “Cracking the Code is Just the Tip of the Goldberg” 22 2.1 Introductory Strategy 22 2.2 Music & Science 25 3. Bach’s Composition Techniques as Structuring Devices 29 3.1 Mathematical Number Theory 31 3.1.1 A Total of Thirty-Two Variations & Chapters 31 3.1.2 The “Rule of Three” 33 3.1.3 “Four Scale-Steps Descend from Do” 34 3.2 Canonic Techniques 36 3.2.1 The Braiding of Narrative Strands 37 3.2.2 Inversion & Retrograde 40 3.2.3 Augmentation & Diminution 44 3.3 Musical Analogies Concerning Content 45 3.3.1 A One-to-One Mapping of Chapters & Variations 46 3.3.2 “Once More with Feeling” 52 4. More Composers & More Compositions 55 4.1 Marian Anderson 55 4.2 George Gershwin 56 4.3 Paul Robeson 56 4.4 Glenn Gould 61 3 B. THE TIME OF OUR SINGING 65 1. The Notion of Time 65 2. “We’ve Decided to Raise the Children Beyond Race” 70 2.1 The Educational Experiment 71 2.2 A Utopian Dream Bound to Fail? 74 2.3 The Children’s Path in Life 76 3. The Ownership of Culture & the Sense of Belonging 86 3.1 Marian Anderson 87 3.2 Paul Robeson 90 3.3 Johann Sebastian Bach 91 3.4 George Gershwin 96 4. “The Use of Music is to Remind Us How Short a Time We Have a Body” 97 4.1 John Dowland 98 4.2 Franz Schubert 101 4.3 Johann Sebastian Bach 106 CONCLUSION 111 CITED WORKS 119 4 INTRODUCTION In order to examine the narrative strategies authors employ to incorporate music in their literary works, it is necessary to have a look at the research field that investigates such efforts, namely comparative literature. While some argue for the inclusion of the comparison between literature and other forms of artistic expression, like music, others are reluctant to accept these examinations as a proper subdiscipline of comparative literature. But even when attempting to define comparative literature without the inclusion of the arts, the discipline remains difficult to delineate due to its diverse and fragmented nature. There is no agreement on the scope of this study, nor is there a methodology that can be applied to all comparative studies. If we want to clarify the nature of this complex research field, we will have to investigate how comparative literature acquired its name as well as the various changes the concept has undergone from its early beginnings until present times. Several scholars and critics have attempted to define and redefine comparative literature at various moments in history. The commonly acknowledged descriptions evolve through time according to the period’s practices, generally conforming to the definition advocated by one of the most influential figures in the research field. The most important and relevant outlines of these will be presented in this introduction. The name of this branch of knowledge does not always correspond to the subject matter dealt with and the method applied in studying it. The subject matter covers a large and uncertain territory as the words “comparative” and “literature” can be understood in various ways. The position of theory within the discipline is also a complicated matter as comparative literature constantly accommodates new theoretical positions (Hutcheon 1995: 299; Komar 1995: 290; Loriggio 1995: 259). The overall methodological approach derived from the scientific practice to compare and contrast items as a means of confirming a hypothesis (Bassnett 1993: 12; McCredie 1994: 253). Because this comparative method is a simple and common one applied in various fields of studies, it will not assist in fixing the boundaries of the discipline. In 1960, Henry H. H. Remak observes that the area of comparative literature is so diversified that a well-defined approach with guiding principles, methods and working agreements must be sought in order to validate comparative studies and assist scholars in their research (3). A decade later, Remak modifies his view and posits that “[c]omparative literature, as does the study of all literature, must in principle admit of 5 all methods of approach. It is up to the individual scholar to show that the approach chosen for a particular literary object or subject is appropriate” (1973: 20). Horst Frenz and Ulrich Weisstein have two pieces of advice for the comparatist (1956: 68, 70). Firstly, the scholar should start with the differences and then move on to the similarities between the two subjects under study. Secondly, it is best to vary the procedure in accordance with the characteristics of each style and the historical background of each movement. Haun Saussy offers a third piece of advice by putting forward that comparative literature “does its work best as a chain of ands: this relationship and that relation and that relation … – each and modifying the sense of those that came before” (2003: 338, italics and ellipsis in original). The practice of comparing literatures, even in its modern sense, is older than its current disciplinary term as even the earliest periods of literary development had generated uncritical comparative investigations between authors, works or national literatures (Gayley 1973: 91; Levin 1968: 7; McCredie 1994: 252; Prawer 1973: 10; Saussy 2006: 5). However, these occurrences are considered to be accidental, rather than an established principle. The most formative period for the discipline is the nineteenth century, in which the term “comparative literature” came into existence as nations were rediscovering the past in an attempt to locate their cultural roots as part of an ongoing revolutionary struggle for independence (Bassnett 1993: 8-9, 17; Brunetière 1973: 181; Damrosch 2003a: 327; Jost 1974: 8; Saussy 2006: 6; Wellek and Warren 1948: 40). The research field developed greatly during the Romantic period since it was linked to the notion of national self-consciousness and to the question of establishing a firm cultural identity by means of an organised literary history. Comparative literature acquired its name from Cours de littérature comparée (1816-1825), a series of French anthologies assembled by François Noël and Ghislain François Marie Joseph De La Place for the purpose of teaching literature at the Sorbonne (Bassnett 1993: 12; Jost 1974: 11; Prawer 1973: 10). Although the collection may have given the discipline its name, it does not foreshadow any comparative techniques as they developed later on. The English equivalent of the term was used for the first time by Matthew Arnold in 1848, but it was not established until 1886, the year in which Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett published his book on Comparative Literature (Bassnett 1993: 12; Damrosch 2006: 99-100; Damrosch 2008: 485; Gayley 1973: 87; Prawer 1973: 1; Wellek and Warren 1948: 34). In 1854, the German term “vergeleichende Literaturgeschichte” appeared for the first time in a work written by Moritz Carrière (Baldensperger qtd. in Wellek and Warren 1948: 34). 6 French comparatists dominated the field in the early nineteenth century (Bassnett 1993: 22; Levin 1968: 9; McCredie 1994: 253). During the second half of the twentieth century, intellectuals from all over the world gathered in Paris at the Institut de Littérature Comparée at the Sorbonne, which was founded and directed by Fernand Baldensperger. These scholars attempted to find connections and associations between French literature and their own. The discipline gained international recognition during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.