Modernism, Music and the Politics of Aesthetics

An interdisciplinary account of the political importance of music in modernist literature A new methodology for analysing music in literature, informed by T. W. Adorno, that examines the politics of aesthetics An intensely interdisciplinary book, with an extensive survey and analysis of music's place in Ancient Greek philosophy, German Romanticism, French Symbolism, British Aestheticism, continental philosophy, as well as new musicology, sociology, and analytical philosophy Conceptual re-framing of modernism as an investigation of the problems associated with post-Enlightenment rationality, logic and empiricism Nuanced arguments about the politics of aesthetics and the real-world significance of literary and musical forms Using an approach to music informed by T. W. Adorno, this book examines the real-world, political significance of seemingly abstracted things like musical and literary forms. Re-assessing music in James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Sylvia Townsend Warner, this book re-shapes temporal, aesthetic and political understandings of modernism, by arguing that music plays a crucial role in ongoing attempts to investigate language, rational thought and ideology using aesthetic forms.