The musical crowd in English fiction, 1840-1910 : class, culture and nation / Phyllis Weliver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weliver, Phyllis.

Series:

Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Music and literature--History--19th century.

Music and literature.

History.

Music--Social aspects--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Music in literature.

Social norms in literature.

Collective behavior in literature.

Music--Social aspects.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

ix, 245 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Summary:

Between 1840 and 1910, many best-selling English novels reveal a fascination with the listening audience, musical ensemble, and mass-music movement. This pioneering new book argues that these popular narratives share a perception of musical performance as participating in larger cultural forces, such as ideas about nation. Looking at this cultural thematics also links literature that is not usually discussed together: Charlotte Bronte's Villette is shown to head up a tradition that includes works of fiction by George Meredith, Samuel Butler, George Bernard Shaw, Vernon Lee, and E.M. Forster.

In her original study, Phyllis Weliver examines the theme of the 'musical crowd' alongside Victorian social, political, and scientific theories. While usually considered discrete fields today, the fictional works demonstrate that discourses of group management, ethnology, climate, nation, class, and music were highly interactive during a span of at least seventy years. The exchanges between these fields are not readily apparent in looking at the documents produced by the musical profession alone, so fictional works offer unique and significant insight into how various discourses were imagined as mutually constitutive.

Contents:

1 Surveillance and Musical Passion in Villette 30

2 Germanic Music Ideals in Utopian Communities: Charles Auchester, Erewhon and "Euphonia" 56

3 Music, Climate Theory and the Working Classes in Sandra Belloni 83

4 Imagining 1848 Risorgimento Opera Production in Vittoria 110

5 Shaw's Fiction and the Emerging English Musical Renaissance 130

6 From Collective Action to Creative Individuality: Robert Elsmere, Dodo, Althea and Howards End 156.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 190-235) and index.

ISBN:

1403999945

OCLC:

67922746

Publisher Number:

9781403999948

Online:

Publisher description