The writer's fugue : musicalization, trauma and subjectivity in the literature of modernity
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2007
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This interdisciplinary inquiry utilises the contested context of 'subjectivity' as a frame
for seeking to analyse and understand the process of writing as creative art. The main
problem investigated involves the construction of the subject in language and the
construction of subjectivity in the literature of modernity. The heuristic vehicle chosen
for exploring dichotomies in discourse around cultural, social and literary constructions
of the subject, is the fugue - a cultural figure with dual-meanings.
The musical fugue is a polyphonic, contrapuntal social musical form that develops
from one or two melodic subject lines or themes, played in numerous variations by
several 'voices', implying rule-governed tum-taking dialogic communication. In direct
contrast, the psychogenic fugue is a 'mysterious' condition of dissociation involving an
individual subject losing awareness of self-identity, wandering off on a solitary journey
of temporary amnesia. The classic musical fugue form has been converted into a
rhetorical, symbolic and above all creative figure by self-consciously inventive literary
authors in musicalized works derived from their author's own experiences of trauma.
Examples analysed here are De Quincey's Dream-Fugue, Proust's A la recherche du
temps perdu, the 'Sirens' section in Joyce's Ulysses, Celan's Todesfuge and Plath's
Little Fugue.
This fugal analysis contextualises these intermedial works alongside wider
parallels of musicology and current research in scientific medical discourse on the
psychogenic fugue. Through this inter-disciplinary phenomenological inquiry emerges a
fresh approach: the cultural construction of subjectivity in innovative forms of writing
herein referred to as the 'writer's fugue' and 'the fugal modality of writing'. Bringing
together distinctive discourses from the arts, medical science, psychoanalysis and
poststructuralist linguistic theory suggests new meanings may be wrought concerning
the construction/ deconstruction/ reconstruction/ structuration/ and post-structuration of
what is herein termed the 'fugal' subject in the language and literature of modernity.
These meanings provide a basis for a continuing inquiry not only into subjectivity but
also into the creative process.
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