Listening to Iris Murdoch : Music, Sounds, and Silences /

Listening to Iris Murdoch : Music, Sounds, and Silences /

"Listening to Iris Murdoch's focus on the sonic, which in literary criticism is often treated like a poor relation to the visual, is most welcome. Through perceptive close readings, Gillian Dooley uses the lens of music, sound and silence to draw out gender, sexuality, Irish politics, dome...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dooley, Gillian (Author)
Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Edition:1st ed. 2022.
Series:Iris Murdoch Today,
Subjects:
Literature-History and criticism.
Aesthetics.
Music.
Literature.
Literary Criticism.
Electronic books.
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Table of Contents:
  • 1. Chapter 1 Listening to Iris Murdoch
  • Introduction
  • Music and sound in fiction: a review of the field
  • Music in Murdoch's life
  • Discussions of music in Murdoch's philosophy
  • The sound-worlds in Murdoch's fiction
  • Part I - Music
  • 2. Chapter 2 'The music is too painful': Music as character and atmosphere
  • Introduction
  • 'Awaken, my blackbird': Music in The unicorn
  • 'Like a breathless enchanted girl': Music in The red and the green
  • The swan princess: Music in The time of the angels
  • 'The concourse of sweet sounds': Music in The nice and the good
  • Conclusion
  • 3. Chapter 3 'The point at which flesh and spirit most joyfully meet': Singers and singing
  • Introduction
  • 'Che cosa e amor?': Singing in The sea, the sea
  • Singing as exclusion in The message to the planet
  • 'Never to sing again? Never?': Singing in The philosopher's pupil (1983)
  • Conclusion
  • 4. Chapter 4 Musical women and unmusical men
  • Introduction: 'Of course they never let the women sing.'
  • Quiet women: The good apprentice
  • Silent pianos
  • No women composers
  • Opera, intimacy, sexuality and androgyny in A fairly honourable defeat
  • Conclusion
  • Part II - Silence and sound
  • 5. Chapter 5 'Different voices, different discourses': Voices and other human sounds
  • Introduction: Serious noticing
  • 'The long search for words': Something special
  • 'The quiet sound of voices': The sandcastle
  • 'Intolerable with menace': Henry and Cato
  • 'A mechanical litany': The good apprentice
  • Conclusion
  • 6. Chapter 6 'Like a clarity under a mist': Ambient noise and silence, dreamscapes and atmosphere
  • Introduction
  • The sacred and profane love machine: The drama of silence
  • The black prince and Under the net: Silence and art
  • Bruno's dream: Synaesthesia and perception
  • Nuns and soldiers
  • Conclusion
  • Part III - Settings
  • 7. Chapter 7 'Just bring me the composers': Musical settings of Iris Murdoch's words
  • Introduction
  • The servants - opera: music by William Mathias, libretto by Iris Murdoch
  • The round horizon, cantata in five parts: music by Christopher Bochmann, words by Iris Murdoch
  • The one alone: Radio play with music by Gary Carpenter
  • A year of birds: Song cycle for soprano and orchestra by Malcolm Williamson
  • Forgive me. In memoriam Iris Murdoch, 1919-1999, for unaccompanied vocal ensemble (SATB) by Paul Crabtree
  • Inspired by Iris: Paul Hullah and Kent Wennman
  • Paul Hullah, All the names under the sun and Home
  • Kent Wennman, A Jerusalem conversation and The thinker and the feeling one
  • Conclusion: Iris Murdoch set to music
  • Coda Sound, music, silence and listening
  • Part IV - The music
  • Appendix 1 Music mentioned in Murdoch's fiction
  • Classical composers
  • Vocal music
  • Chronological list of music mentioned in Murdoch's fiction
  • Appendix 2 Items in Iris Murdoch's Oxford music collection held at Kingston University Library
  • Iris Murdoch's manuscript notebooks of songs
  • Anthologies, collections, scores etc
  • Single works.