Music and Religion in the Writings of Ian Mcewan
Music and Religion in the Writings of Ian Mcewan

Author: Iain Quinn

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1837650829

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The majority of characters in Ian McEwan's novels are educated members of the middle class, but without any great private financial means and certainly no great affluence. Despite different occupations, whether scientist (Solar), musician (On Chesil Beach, Amsterdam) or surgeon (Saturday), they are faced with moral, ethical, religious and personal dilemmas that bear resonance to a contemporary audience. Classical music is present throughout McEwan's writings (including his recent Lessons, 2022), mostly not as an accompanying theme but as a necessary part of life's pleasures and for some, essential needs. The combination of music and the unforgettable narrative moments create a unique space for McEwan to translate his views on the world. The value of music, not least as a complementary presence to silence, is portrayed not just as the source of comfort but as a known presence that is dependable to an individual on a near spiritual level. Within his writings there is also a clear understanding of the role of the Church of England as a societal, cultural and established presence within British society. In the literary descriptions of McEwan and other authors this often extends beyond the immediate theological and ecclesiastical concerns of the day. McEwan's writings demonstrate a perceptive knowledge of the nuances of this highly specific cultural dynamic. McEwan's ability to discern sentiments that easily resonate with musicians place his contribution to the field of music and literature studies in a singular position among living writers discussing classical music in Britain. This book provokes questions for those who encounter these areas for the first time in McEwan's writings, and it offers a place of sustained enquiry for those who have experienced these fields first-hand, whether as listeners, performers, congregants, audience members or scholars across literary, musical or ecclesiastical fields. Iain Quinn's book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary British literature, as well as those interested in words and music studies more generally.

Music, Religion, and Society in the Writings of Ian McEwan
Music, Religion, and Society in the Writings of Ian McEwan

Author: Iain Quinn

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9781350215221

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"The book examines the role of music, religion, and society in the writings of Ian McEwan. McEwan's novels provide readers and scholars with both a portrayal of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century British society and the views of an author who is constantly engaged in personal research. His understanding of music, religion, and society not only corresponds and expands upon those of scholars and commentators in these fields but, this book argues, also advances their arguments through a literary narrative that enables the reader to become immersed in a world that, if their own, is familiar, and if not, at least easily approachable. This book engages with a range of McEwan's writings, including Amsterdam and On Chesil Beach , and features an interview with the writer himself, building on work that explores how individuals and society at-large respond to music, religion, society, class struggles, and the complex structure of British society as it is portrayed in McEwan's narratives. In so doing, this is the first study that contextualizes and illuminates the significance of McEwan's work in the larger field of British cultural studies."--

Rudolph Ganz, Patriotism, and Standardization of The Star-Spangled Banner, 1907-1958
Rudolph Ganz, Patriotism, and Standardization of The Star-Spangled Banner, 1907-1958

Author: Iain Quinn

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-11-07

Total Pages: 107

ISBN-13: 100381736X

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This book examines the succession of events toward the potential standardization of the music for “The Star-Spangled Banner” from an initial letter to President Roosevelt in 1907 to the 1958 congressional hearings on the National Anthem, and the later work of the Swiss-Born American pianist, Rudolph Ganz. These events took place across five decades when a culture of public patriotism was especially pronounced for immigrant musicians. This book contextualizes the complementary experiences of a leading immigrant musician, Ganz, who successfully navigated the world of public patriotism while pursuing the realization of a standardized version. The materials are discussed through the lens of the performance practice. The legacy of standardization has not previously been examined. The response and actions of an immigrant, Ganz, in a culture of necessary patriotism for foreign-born artists shed important new light on this topic. It demonstrates the challenges, fears, and cultural expectations regarding the standardization of an important patriotic work.

The Children Act
The Children Act

Author: Ian McEwan

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2014-09-09

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 0385539711

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A brilliant, emotionally wrenching novel from the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement about a leading High Court judge who must resolve an urgent case—as well as her crumbling marriage. Fiona Maye is a leading High Court judge who presides over cases in the family division. She is renowned for her fierce intelligence, exactitude, and sensitivity. But her professional success belies private sorrow and domestic strife. There is the lingering regret of her childlessness, and now her marriage of thirty years is in crisis. At the same time, she is called on to try an urgent case: Adam, a beautiful seventeen-year-old boy, is refusing for religious reasons the medical treatment that could save his life, and his devout parents echo his wishes. Time is running out. Should the secular court overrule sincerely expressed faith? In the course of reaching a decision, Fiona visits Adam in the hospital—an encounter that stirs long-buried feelings in her and powerful new emotions in the boy. Her judgment has momentous consequences for them both. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons.

Lessons
Lessons

Author: Ian McEwan

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2022-09-13

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 0593535219

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NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A NEW YORKER ESSENTIAL READ • From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it. A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Vogue • The New Yorker “Masterful.... McEwan is a storyteller at the peak of his powers…. One of the joys of the novel is the way it weaves history into Roland’s biography…. The pleasure in reading this novel is letting it wash over you.” —Associated Press When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life. Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means—music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times—a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

Jeanette Winterson’s Narratives of Desire
Jeanette Winterson’s Narratives of Desire

Author: Shareena Z. Hamzah-Osbourne

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-05-06

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1350178047

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Putting forward a new theory of fetishism - alternative fetishism - this book provides an up-to-date examination of the work of Jeanette Winterson, offering fresh perspectives and new insights on the topics of gender, sexuality, and identity in her writing. Combining contemporary theories in psychoanalytical and cultural studies, it proposes that a rethinking of fetishism allows Winterson's works to be brought into sharper critical focus by repositioning fetishism as a daily practice in society. In so doing, it argues that Winterson's work challenges orthodox, normative, and contemporary views of fetishism to reveal her own alternative version. Containing the transcript of an email Q&A with Winterson herself and covering the majority of Winterson's oeuvre, from her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), up to the most recent, Frankissstein (2019), the book is divided into three main chapters that each discuss a particular theme in Winterson's fiction: bodily fetishism, food fetishism, and sexual fetishism. While the book's focus is on Winterson, the theoretical framework it proposes can be applied to other authors and disciplines in the Arts and Humanities, such as theatre and film, offering new ways of thinking about topics such as fetishism, feminism, psychoanalytical theory, postmodernism, gender, and sexuality.

Postcolonial Readings of Music in World Literature
Postcolonial Readings of Music in World Literature

Author: Cameron Fae Bushnell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0415539560

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This book reads representations of Western music in literary texts to reveal the ways in which artifacts of imperial culture function within contemporary world literature. Bushnell argues that Western music’s conventions for performance, composition, and listening, established during the colonial period, persist in postcolonial thought and practice. Music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic periods (Bach through Brahms) coincides with the rise of colonialism, and Western music contains imperial attitudes and values embedded within its conventions, standards, and rules. The book focuses on the culture of classical music as reflected in the worlds of characters and texts and contends that its effects outlast the historical significance of the real composers, pieces, styles, and forms. Through examples by authors such as McEwan, Vikram Seth, Bernard MacLaverty, Chang-rae Lee, and J.M. Coetzee, the book demonstrates how Western music enters narrative as both acts of history and as structures of analogy that suggest subject positions, human relations, and political activity that, in turn, describes a postcolonial condition. The uses to which Western music is put in each literary text reveals how European art music of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries is read and misread by postcolonial generations, exposing mostly hidden cultural structures that influence our contemporary understandings of social relations and hierarchies, norms for resolution and for assigning significance, and standards of propriety. The book presents strategies for thinking anew about the persistence of cultural imperialism, reading Western music simultaneously as representative of imperial, cultural dominance and as suggestive of resistant structures, forms, and practices that challenge the imperial hegemony.

The Dead
The Dead

Author: James Joyce

Publisher: Modernista

Published: 2024-03-21

Total Pages: 43

ISBN-13: 9180948383

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One of the greatest short stories in world literature. »He single-handedly killed the 19th century.« T. S. Eliot »James Joyce revolutionized 20th-century literature.« Time Magazine After a visitation from the dead - through something as concrete as someone singing a particular Irish song - Gabriel Conroy is struck by the profound realization of how superficially he has always loved his wife, Gretta. The image of the falling snow around them, deepening into a cosmic metaphor for life and death as the story progresses, has been called the most beautiful snowfall in literary history. JAMES JOYCE [1882-1941], Irish author, is a key figure in modernist literature with works such as Dubliners [1914], A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [1916], and Ulysses [1922].

Machines Like Me
Machines Like Me

Author: Ian McEwan

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2019-04-23

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0385545126

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From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding. Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first generation of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he codesigns Adam's personality. The near-perfect human that emerges is beautiful, strong, and smart—and a love triangle soon forms. Ian McEwan's subversive, gripping novel poses fundamental questions: What makes us human—our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns against the power to invent things beyond our control. Don’t miss Ian McEwan’s new novel, Lessons, coming in September!

Enduring Love
Enduring Love

Author: Ian McEwan

Publisher: Vintage Canada

Published: 2010-07-20

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0307366995

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In one of the most striking opening scenes ever written, a bizarre ballooning accident and a chance meeting give birth to an obsession so powerful that an ordinary man is driven to the brink of madness and murder by another's delusions. Ian McEwan brings us an unforgettable story—dark, gripping, and brilliantly crafted—of how life can change in an instant.