Dear PERF-STUD-NET Subscribers,
I would like to announce the publication of my new book by Bloomsbury, 'Angela Carter and Folk Music: "Invisible Music", Prose, and the Art of Canorography".
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/angela-carter-and-folk-music-9781350296299/
At a folk music conference, I realised I knew Carter was a folk singer; it took six years to figure out how. On my journey I discovered a previously-unknown archive of Carter's folk manuscripts, musical notations, books and LPs (including a recording of her singing), and set about aligning its contents in thematic, rhythmic, and structural ways with those 'audial' elements in her writing which had alerted me to her muscle memory of singing performance. I needed a neologism for the presence of 'songfulness' in prose writing as opposed to poetry, and settled on 'canorography', prose writing infused with qualities of 'songfulness'.
In this book I perform a running-stitch methodology, moving in via archival analysis, through literary criticism/musicology, and out via interview, charting the evidence of Carter's deft canorographic move from song into prose and back out into song through the songwriters who have been inspired by her. I closely examine the work of folk singer Emily Portman, and in so doing demonstrate Carter's transcoding of musical elements through the ways she has inspired subsequent musicians.
Here's a snippet from the conclusion: "We readers are singers; we perform the ‘music of prose’ on behalf of the dead, the ‘dead’, the ‘proliferated’, the absent, author. Prose is a form of song, an extended performance of the voice, in which we are asked to perform on behalf of the absent author. Writing, singing, reading, listening: there really is no gap between them; for to read is to perform, and to write is to sing. These forms come from the same source; boundaries between them are imagined. This is the ‘living bridge’ formed in the acoustic production of prose which creates an intimate somatic loop; it unites the reader with the author corporeally, for the reader is generating imagined sound on behalf of the author. The reader becomes the author in very intimate, phonological terms – ‘I am Stendhal’; as such, there is no boundary between them; they are unified by the ‘living bridge’ of their shared production across space and time."
Review - "This illuminating and innovative study offers fresh and original perspectives on the work of one of the most influential and widely-discussed British writers of the twentieth century - Angela Carter. Bringing new critical attention to a formative but under-examined period of her life, it explores Carter’s contribution to the British Folk revival of the 1960s and its impact on her early work. Original archival research and musicological analysis combine to make a compelling case for the origins and significance of ‘songfulness’ in Carter’s writing. This book will be essential reading for Angela Carter’s many admirers." Rachel Carroll, Reader in English in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law, Teesside University, UK
*Use the following discount codes to save 35% on this book when purchasing on Bloomsbury.com
UK and rest of world customers: GLR 9XUUK Americas customers (excluding Canada): GLR 9XUUS Canada customers: GLR 9XUCA
Australia and New Zealand customers: GLR 9XUAU
This offer is available to individuals only. Please note price and availability subject to change without notice. Discount code only valid for books showing as available on bloomsbury.com (including eBooks). We regret that we’re not able to deliver directly to EU territories at this time.
Available to preorder now.
Publication date 29 December 2022.
Many thanks to this vibrant community and best wishes
Polly Paulusma
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Dr Polly Paulusma
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University of Cambridge — External supervisor, English Faculty
Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP), London — Module Leader, Tutor
Institute for Continuing Education (ICE), Cambridge — Module Director, Tutor
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