Music and Myth in Modern Literature

Josh Torabi is an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from UCL in 2020. He has held various scholarships and visiting fellowships at Yale University (2017), the Zurich James Joyce Foundation (2018-19), ILCS (formerly the Institute of Modern Languages Research), University of London (2020-21) and Queen Mary University of London (2020-23). Josh’s research focuses on the aesthetic intersections between literature, music and philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular focus on European modernism. He is Chair of the Oscar Levy Forum for Nietzsche Studies at the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations, Queen Mary University of London.

• Prelude: Chasing the Ineffable 1. Schopenhauer, Wagner and Nietzsche: the Musicalization of Myth and the Mythologization of Music in The Birth of Tragedy Musico-Mythic Beginnings Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Music in The World as Will and Representation Wagner: Musicalizing Nation and Myth in Beethoven Nietzsche’s Aesthetic Models of Music and Myth in The Birth of Tragedy Towards a Nietzschean Configuration in the Modern Novel 2. Jean-Christophe: The Silent Music of the Soul The Genesis of Jean-Christophe A Born Musician: Jean-Christophe’s Early Years The Roots of Artistic Creation: Jean-Christophe the Creator Music Fictionalized: Jean-Christophe’s Compositions Divisions: Apollo, Dionysus and Franco-German Musico-Literary Relations in Jean-Christophe Jean-Christophe’s Final Voyage: Improvisation, Italy and Late Music 3. Joyce’s ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’: Performative Music and Mythic Method in Ulysses Approaching Music and Myth in Ulysses Stephen Dedalus-Dionysus: A Portrait of the Artist’s Aesthetic Theory in "Proteus" From Apollo to Bloom: Resisting Songs in the "Sirens" And Behold: Leopold Could Not Live Without Stephen! The Apollonian and Dionysian, Side by Side in "Eumaeus" Home at Last: Stephen Speaks the Language of Bloom; and Bloom, Finally the Language of Stephen; and so the Highest Goal of Comedy and of Ulysses is Attained. Myth Updating in Ulysses 4. The Pact: Music and Myth in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus Demonic Origins Mann and Myth Part I: Adrian Leverkühn’s Education Kretzschmar’s Lectures Part II: Why Adrian Leverkühn Writes Such Good Music The Early Works Apocalypse Now! The Great Lament: Adrian Leverkühn’s Masterpiece and Faust’s Redemption Reprise: Myth and Music as Motifs in the Modern Novel