Musique; Caryl Phillips; Dancing in the Dark; Jazz
Abstract :
[en] My proposal is to deal with Dancing in the Dark (London: Vintage, 2005), a novel by Caryl Phillips, a contemporary British author of Caribbean descent. This narrative is devoted to the Caribbean American entertainer Bert Williams (1874–1922) who was the first black performer in the Ziegfield Follies and it traces his frustrating life as a black performer who had to blackface.
Like most of Phillips’s literary production, Dancing in the Dark is shaped by music, both thematically –there are scenes involving musical performances, lyrics interspersed throughout the novel– and formally through the recurrent and creative use of repetitions and meaningful variations in rhythm, and sonic effects. Indeed, various elements of sound are present through poetic language and forms to emphasize elements of rhythm: repetitive devices such as rhymes, meters and alliterations. My contention is that these rhythmic devices partake in the emotional impact of Phillips’s writing; sonic elements emphasize the musical properties of language, strike the reader and prevent them from forgetting the traumatic experience of Bert. Through repetition, they transfer the character’s traumatic experience into the writing and create a sense of sympathy with the reader which privileges immediate empathy.
If Bert Williams has been largely forgotten until recently, I believe that Phillips’s rhythmic prose will enable Bert’s story to resonate in the reader’s mind long after closing the book.
Research Center/Unit :
CEREP - Centre d'Enseignement et de Recherche en Études Postcoloniales - ULiège
Disciplines :
Literature
Author, co-author :
Mascoli, Giulia ; Université de Liège > Département de langues et littératures modernes > Langue et linguistique anglaises modernes
Language :
English
Title :
Rhythm and Repetition in Caryl Phillips’s Dancing in the Dark
Publication date :
20 March 2016
Event name :
The American Comparative Literature Association's 2016 Annual Meeting
This website uses cookies to improve user experience. Read more
Save & Close
Accept all
Decline all
Show detailsHide details
Cookie declaration
About cookies
Strictly necessary
Performance
Strictly necessary cookies allow core website functionality such as user login and account management. The website cannot be used properly without strictly necessary cookies.
This cookie is used by Cookie-Script.com service to remember visitor cookie consent preferences. It is necessary for Cookie-Script.com cookie banner to work properly.
Performance cookies are used to see how visitors use the website, eg. analytics cookies. Those cookies cannot be used to directly identify a certain visitor.
Used to store the attribution information, the referrer initially used to visit the website
Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. Websites use cookies to help users navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. Cookies that are required for the website to operate properly are allowed to be set without your permission. All other cookies need to be approved before they can be set in the browser.
You can change your consent to cookie usage at any time on our Privacy Policy page.