Book contents
- E. M. Forster and Music
- E. M. Forster and Music
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Rhythm of the Racial Other
- Chapter 2 The Queering of Musical Instruments
- Chapter 3 From Literary Heritage to National Character
- Chapter 4 The Problem of the Wagnerian Hero
- Chapter 5 Amateurism, Musicology, and Gender
- Postlude
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - The Queering of Musical Instruments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2021
- E. M. Forster and Music
- E. M. Forster and Music
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Rhythm of the Racial Other
- Chapter 2 The Queering of Musical Instruments
- Chapter 3 From Literary Heritage to National Character
- Chapter 4 The Problem of the Wagnerian Hero
- Chapter 5 Amateurism, Musicology, and Gender
- Postlude
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The second chapter focuses specifically on A Passage to India, examining the ways in which Forster’s representations of Western musical instruments in the novel destabilize and subvert – that is, queer – colonial norms. It continues the previous chapter’s interrogation of the conventional dissociation of modernist aesthetics from politics by bypassing Forster’s preference for a formalist, ‘abstract’ reading of the novel and going against his consistent dilution of the novel’s political resonance with contemporary nationalist movements in India. Documenting Forster’s awareness of the dissemination of Western musical instruments as an embodiment of the empire’s material invasion of the colony, the chapter explores his rarely discussed attention to the material existence of music as part of his criticism of colonialism. Drawing upon postcolonial theories, material culture studies, and queer musicology, the chapter suggests that Forster’s descriptions of Ronny Heaslop’s viola, the Maharajah’s harmonium, and a piano in a European Guest House delineate the individual subjection to and negotiation of external forces in a colonial environment.
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- Information
- E. M. Forster and Music , pp. 48 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021