LIT 5017 - Spring 2026 - Fault

“For twenty-five centuries, western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible.” Jacques Attali’s demand for a new mode of engaging the world that de-centers sight and attends to the world as an auditory phenomenon is answered by the writers of the modern music novel, which describes everyday realities but also aestheticizes these realities by foregrounding musical processes. Our reading will focus on twentieth and twenty-first century fiction, paying close attention to how writers adapt the methods of musical composition for narrative purposes in their writing. We’ll also consider how the shift from analog to digital technology has transformed the “musicalization of fiction” (Werner Wolf) as well as our lives. Course reading includes: Michael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter, Toni Morrison’s Jazz, Jackie Kay’s Trumpet, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall, Michael Thelwell’s The Harder They Come, and Odafe Atogun’s Taduno’s Song.

Requirements: This course fulfills the following concentration requirements: Post-1900 Literary and Cultural Studies (American, British, Irish); a Literary Genre (Fiction).