Angela Carter and Folk Music: 'Invisible Music', Prose and the Art of Canorography

(Hardback)

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Description

From her unique standpoint as singer-songwriter-scholar, Polly Paulusma examines the influences of Carters 1960s folk singing, unknown until now, on her prose writing. Recent critical attention has focused on Carters relationship with folk/fairy tales, but this book uses a newly available archive containing Carters folk song notes, books, LPs and recordings to change the debate, proving Carter performed folk songs. Placing this archive alongside the album sleeve notes Carter wrote and her diaries and essays, it reimagines Carters prose as a vehicle for the singing voice, and reveals a writing style imbued with songfulness informed by her singing praxis. Reading Carters texts through songs she knew and sang, this book shows, from influences of rhythm, melodic shape, thematic focus, imagery, voice and breath, how Carter steeped her writing with folk songs features to produce canorography: song-infused prose. Concluding with a discussion of Carters profound influence on songwriters, focusing on the author's interview with Emily Portman, this book invites us to reimagine Carters prose as audial event, dissolving boundaries between prose and song, between text and reader, between word and sound, in an ever-renewing act of sympathetic resonance.

Reviews

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 Carters 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 Carters writing. This book will be essential reading for Angela Carters many admirers. * Rachel Carroll, Reader in English in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law, Teesside University, UK *

Author Bio

Polly Paulusma is an independent scholar and professional musician based in the UK. Please visit her website www.pollypaulusma.com to know more about her work.