Song in the Novel (Proceedings of the British Academy)

Song in the Novel investigates the variety of types of songs present in novels, from French romances, ballads, folk songs, opera, and opéra-comique, to café-concert music, blues and jazz, and more recent popular music. Throughout, literary scholars, musicologists, and cultural historians analyse novels written in a range of languages, including English, French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. Using a range of interdisciplinary and comparative material, Song in the Novel explores the way that songs can be present in novels, from the inclusion of musical scores to broader practices of citation and allusion. It interrogates the function of song in the novel, considering its importance for plot, character, and setting. Finally, it addresses the reader's involvement in these songs — whether through immediate recognition or further research — with the result that they may participate in what Lawrence Kramer describes as a 'song pact' with the author, akin to the intimate connections between characters enabled through song in the novel.