A multidisciplinary research focusing on the complex interrelationship of music and literature has expanded rapidly in the recent years. There are numerous examples in European and American literatures, both in poetry and prose, where music plays a vital rolе (Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov, Proust, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Apollinaire, George Eliot, Henry James, and many others), and while there has been many published studies focusing on the formal relationship between the sister arts of music and literature (Steven Paul Scher “Literature and Music,” Werner Woft “The Musicalization of Fiction,” Delia de Souza Correa “George Eliot, Music and Victorian Culture”), there has not been much research focused specifically on music or musical performance within the text.
The proposed interdisciplinary panel aims to analyze the relationship of music and music performance and the literary works within various national literatures, from 19th century to present day, by providing an overview of the different approaches to this topic and investigating the author’s technique of representing music in literature. We invite a broad range of papers devoted to the analysis of the complex interplay of the two art forms, aesthetic and cultural interactions between music and literature, audience and performers, the nature of creativity and the role of music in the specific texts, as well as the broader topics of integrating a musical performance within the narrative form. Participants are invited to submit a 300-word abstract by September 30th 2018 through Nemla portal: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17571
Julia Titus, Yale University