Musical Stimulacra: Literary Narrative and the Urge to Listen

The title coinage of this book, stimulacra, refers to the fundamental capacity of literary narrative to stimulate our minds and senses by simulating things through words. Musical stimulacra are passages of fiction that readers are empowered to transpose into mental simulations of music. The book theorizes how fiction can generate musical experience, explains what constitutes that experience, and explores the musical dimensions of three American novels: William T. Vollmanns Europe Central (2005), William H. Gasss Middle C (2013), and Richard Powerss Orfeo (2014). Musical Stimulacra approaches fictions music from a readerly perspective. Instead of looking at how novels forever fail to compensate for musics physical, structural, and affective properties, the book concentrates on what literary narrative can do musically. Negotiating common grounds for cognitive audionarratology and intermediality studies, Musical Stimulacra builds its case on the assumption that, among other things, fiction urges us to listen--to musical words and worlds.