published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

The topic of this thesis is time in the West African novel in English and French, and the key approach is that West African time is readily grasped through a study of West African music. Though Western time is not exclusively or only linear, mechanical and exploitative, and African time not exclusively cyclic, synchronic and experiential, yet there is a characteristically African view of time and preferred modes of its employment in West African fiction. The novelists considered here wrote in European languages, yet each was a member of a specific cultural group and concerned to portray the aesthetics of his inheritance, an important aspect of which is the predominance of repetitive formulae, both in music and in oral literature. The Introduction offers an historical survey of some of the main notions of time that have been manifest in the West, and compares them with notions of African time. Chapter One examines the structural use of rhythm and repetition in the novels of Camara Laye. Chapter Two discusses the griot and other traditions of oral literature in the novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and Yambo Ouologuem, novels which are concerned with the griot 's continuing role in the creation and dissemination of historical perspective. Chapter Three analyses Chinua Achebe 's portrayal of the values of pre-colonial life in Igbo society where the role of music is to limit behaviour through the structures of ritual which thus create static/cyclic time. Chapter Four describes the syncretic art-form, 'highlife', as used by novelists such as Wole Soyinka, which, because it is transitory and always changing, underscores the ironies of modern city life. The thesis concludes that the authors discussed above are aware that music, because it is predominantly social in Africa, is a powerful medium for achieving a healing synthesis between the traditional past when communalistic values were binding, and the urban-orientated present with its insistence on individuation and material enrichment.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the evolution of the rôle of music in the works of Marcel Proust. Because of the autobiographical character of his two novels, we concluded that the importance given to music is related to the importance he gave to this art in his life. His rare sensitivity to sounds and his genuine musical temperament can be traced throughout his works, and mainly in the numerous notations of "musique naturelle" (sounds heard in nature such as the song of a bird, the hum of a fly, the sound of a bell, etc. ...) so meaningful in particular to the narrator of Jean Santeuil. In order to show exactly which factors contributed to his musical formation, this study outlines the musical climate in France at the turn of the century and demonstrates, thanks to hints and assertions of his own made in his correspondence and in his works, the influence his family, his friends and the high society he was associated with, had on his musical formation, and what his musical taste was. With these elements, one can approach the study of the function of music in Proust's works. If music does not have an important rôle in his early works, Les Plaisirs et les jours and Jean Santeuil, it is nevertheless essential to consider it closely since, in regard to music, these works contain in embryonic form some of the most important structural devices that will be used in A la Recherche du Temps perdu (e.g., the satire of musical snobbery, the relationship between music and the theme of remembrance, between music and the theme of love). Such an account of the musical features in Proust's early works enables us to measure what the later masterwork owes to these. In A la Recherche nature gradually disappears and makes room for society. In a parallel direction to this, natural music is replaced by written music heard in the "salons". The reactions of people to music differ greatly according to their culture and temperament. Therefore, regarding the personality of the characters, much is revealed to the reader through this music associated with society in A la Recherche. Among the parallels that can be established between the characters of A la Recherche who are connected with music, the one between Swann and the Narrator is the most significant. It is Vinteuil's music (imaginary music written with words by Proust) that has the essential structural function of bringing into relief those two different personalities and their different destinies; for the one, a failure, for the second, an artistic vocation. Beside having this structural rôle in A la Recherche, music is always present in the particular style that Proust develops in the work. His language is full of metaphors, many of which are borrowed from music. Some musical techniques are also apparent in his composition, such as the crescendo, the diminuendo, the ternary rhythm, the dissonances, etc. Proust, much influenced by Wagner, also shows in his long novel great stylistic and even structural affinities with the Wagnerian operas. The use of the leitmotiv, the length and the complexity of his sentences, the synthesis of the different arts, and the relationship between nature and music in his works are as many features that Proust has in common with the composer that he admired throughout his life. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

The prime purpose of this inquiry is to determine the extent and significance of the treatment of music in the literary and scholarly works of the German writer, Georg Philipp Harsdorffer (1607-1658). At the same time, his references to music are also used as a means of establishing the importance of a non-literary medium for a seventeenth-century writer, and to illustrate Harsdorffer's place in the intellectual life of his times. At the outset, the lack of strict dividing lines between the arts of music and poetry, and between the arts and the sciences in the seventeenth-century is stressed, as is Harsdorffer's own view of the close relationship of all the arts and other fields of knowledge. The seventeenth-century tripartite classification of music, Musica Theoretica, Musica Practica and Musica Poetica, is used as an organizing principle to allow his statements on music to be assessed in their contemporary context. The first chapter, Musica Theoretica, dealing with music as a subject for philosophical speculation, demonstrates Harsdorffer's wide knowledge in this area and his eclectic use of sources. The second chapter, Musica Practica, concerned with music as a science and a practical art, provides information on instruments and technical musical terminology of the seventeenth-century, and shows Harsdorffer's familiarity with these. It is emphasised that his clear presentation of material here is aimed at the practical needs of readers wishing to partake in musical activities. Much of the information provided in the first two chapters is applied in the third chapter, Musica Poetica, which deals with the relationship of music and poetry. An examination of selected poems and songs shows the arts to have formal features in common. Harsdorffer's close collaboration with the composer Sigmund Staden is also established by the analysis of an extract from their opera, Seelewig, and a new source for this work is investigated for the first time. The variety of material in all three chapters is finally put into the context of universal harmony and the Christian world view. / Arts, Faculty of / Central Eastern Northern European Studies, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Texas, 2007. / System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Includes bibliographical references (p. 74-76).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, 2007. / System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Includes bibliographical references (p. 196-210).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Douglass Seaton, Florida State University, School of Music. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed 11-21-03) Document formatted into pages; contains 381 pages. Includes biographical sketch. Includes bibliographic references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 196-210). Also issued online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1934. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [225]-235).