Julia Titus (Yale University)
After several very successful interdisciplinary sessions at past NeMLA conventions we would like to continue our discussions focusing on the complex interrelationship of music and literature. At this year’s session we would like to focus primarily on the twentieth century poetry and prose, and the relationship between the text and the composer, be it biographical or fictional, such as historical accounts of a composer working with the particular text, or portrayals of musicians and composers in the twentieth-century literary works.
The proposed interdisciplinary panel examines the rich relationship of music and literary works within various world literatures focusing primarily on the twentieth century, but presentations within a broader time frame will also be considered. We invite a wide range of papers investigating the author’s technique of representing music in literature, examining aesthetic, historical and cultural interactions between music and literature, audience and performers, as well as the relationship between the literary text and the composer.