The Musico-literary Intermediality Analysis In Carson McCullers’ Fiction

Carson Mc Cullers one of the representative writers of American Southern literature,has published many works.She is known for the portrayal of freaks living in the small town with the motif of “spiritual isolation” through her fiction.Except for writing novels,she has played piano for nearly ten years since her childhood.Her first short story A Reed of Pan was about a musician,and music has been an integral element of her fiction since then.However,critics seemed to ignore the influence of music on Mc Cullers’ novels.This paper attempts to analyze the musical elements in Mc Cullers’ fiction and prove that the literary text imitates music.To explore the relationship between literature and music in Mc Cullers’ fiction,this paper draws on Werner Wolf’s intermediality theoretical framework to analyze the influence and function of music’s inter-medial reference on the thematic meaning production,which explains how the fusion of music and text reveals the micro-social context of the postindustrial era and the psychological plight of the marginalized minority groups in the American southern town.This paper is divided into three parts.The first part is about the obvious manifestation of the affinity between text and music,that is,explicit thematization,which usually involves music media in the novel in the way of “telling”,generally at the level of discourse and story.On the story level,the work features fictional characters telling,listening to and composing music.On the level of discourse,characters in the novel communicate music through discourses,echoing the theme of the novel.The second part concerns the implicit affinities of the music in the novel.From the imaginary content analogies,the music of Beethoven and Schubert evokes the consciousness of characters’ identities,and the associations aroused by the music blend with the living environment of characters.In terms of the structural analogy,Mc Cullers’ novels imitate music in the structure of fugue and sonata,which plays a positive role in the construction of the literary structure and the expansion of motif.Also,the use of musical techniques like counterpoint and repetition with the artistic effect.From the perspective of word music,readers can feel the presence of music through the onomatopoeia and professional musical terms.With the help of word music,seemingly boring words regain a certain sense of rhythm,making readers feel as if they are listening to music while reading novels.Music and literature blend with each other,and the inner world of characters is shown in front of readers.The third part is about the function of music in the novel.Firstly,music can be seen as a microcosm of American society in the 1940 s,whether it is classical music or the popular jazz and blues of that time,all reflect the variety of the society of small town and vividly present the living conditions of numerous characters.Secondly,the novel,like the music,is constantly and dynamically changing through different narrative strategies such as omission,summary and white space.Finally,because Mc Cullers arranges music and plot to appeal to the senses and emotions,which endows her work in the tradition of 18th-century Romanticism.In summary,this paper argues that Mc Cullers’ fiction imitates music.Her fiction attempts to create a music-like aesthetic effect and her love of music merges into the words,showing her emotional concern for the marginalized minority groups in a small southern town and her understanding and reflection on the changes in the southern society in the post-industrial era.