Literature, Music and Cosmopolitanism: Culture as Migration

Description

This book focuses on the twin arts of literature and music, supporting the notion that cosmopolitanism is the natural condition of all the arts, and that all culture - without exception - is migrant culture. It draws on examples ranging from the first to the twenty-first centuries AD, on locations as remote as Alexandria and Australia, on writers as different as Virgil and V.S.Naipaul, Arnold and Achebe, and on musicians as diverse as Bach and Bartok, Purcell and Steve Reich. Across thirteen chapters, the study explores the interpenetration of all forms of human expression, the fallacy of 'national' traditions and limiting conceptions of regional character. The result is an exploration of artistic and intellectual endeavour that is particularly welcome in the current political climate, encouraging us to view history in ways informed by our contemporary demographic and cultural concerns. Taken either as a series of interrelated case studies, or else as an evolving and sequential argument, this book is vital reading for scholars of music, literature, and cultural and social history. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Culture as Migration (Robert Fraser)....Pages 1-16 Is There a Gibbon in the House? Migration, Post-nationality and the Fall and Rise of Europe (Robert Fraser)....Pages 17-30 Roma and Roaming: Borders, Nomads and Myth (Robert Fraser)....Pages 31-50 Of Sirens, Science and Oyster Shells: Hypatia the Philosopher from Gibbon to Black Athena (Robert Fraser)....Pages 51-64 Cultural Migration as Protestant Nostalgia: (1) British Listeners in Italy (Robert Fraser)....Pages 65-77 Cultural Migration as Protestant Nostalgia: (2) Milton, Ruskin and Religious Longing (Robert Fraser)....Pages 79-84 Cultural Migration as Protestant Nostalgia: (3) Purcell, the Popish Plot and the Politics of Latin (Robert Fraser)....Pages 85-95 Migrant Consciences in the Age of Empire: Charles Kingsley, Governor Eyre and the Morant Bay Rising (Robert Fraser)....Pages 97-123 Beyond the National Stereotype: Benedict Anderson and the Bengal Emergency of 1905–06 (Robert Fraser)....Pages 125-160 Migrating Stories: How Textbooks Fired a Canon (Robert Fraser)....Pages 161-172 Towards a New World Order: Literacy, Democracy and Literature in India and Africa, 1930–1965 (Robert Fraser)....Pages 173-183 World Music: Listening to Steve Reich Listening to Africa; Listening to György Ligeti Listening to Reich (Robert Fraser)....Pages 185-194 A Cultural Cosmopolis (Robert Fraser)....Pages 195-203 Back Matter ....Pages 205-211