Study questions for Scientific
Discourses in Literature, pt. 2
Andrew
Crumey's Music in a Foreign Language
Several discourses are intertwined in Crumey's metafictional book:
Music - The book is composed
as a rondo, w. theme
and variations in a repetition structure. See this analysis
(pp. 32-40; in Norwegian - sorry!). Why
and how is the language of music used to structure the novel?
Physics - Charles King is a
physicist/womanizer/dissident. How is the figure of the scientist
represented in the novel? (See also one of Crumey's own physics papers)
History - Duncan's father is a
historian. What role does the idea that history is a (re-writable) text
play in the book? (See this overview of the phenomenon known as historiographic
metafiction)
Politics - The novel is set in
a dystopian environment (a Communist Britain). What role is played by
politics, dissent, power in the novel's universe? Compare to other
famous British dystopias
such as Orwell's 1984 or
Huxley's Brave New World...
Religion -
Non-respectable/alternative physics haunts the novel in figures of
re-incarnation etc. Why?
Love - The intertwined stories
of Duncan and Giovanna and Charles and his several women offer a
counterpoint to the male discourse worlds of science and history. How
do the female characters function in the plot?
Literature - The novel is
overtly metafictional in that it deals extensively with its own genesis
(it also has a story-line that starts over at least three times). It
could be argued that this shows that reality is 'only' a conglomerate
of constructed texts/discourses. Self-reflexivity or self-conscious
fiction is nothing new - but what is the point of writing in this vein?
Does this impede our ability to identify with the characters? Get
excited about the plot?
Could one argue that a master discourse, say one of philosophy or humanism is behind this whole
polyphonic experiment in text?