Zsuzsanna Starecz

The Role of Music in Burgess's Novels: Musico-literary Analysis of a Clockwork Orange and Napoleon Symphony Zsuzsanna Starecz

"To give symphonic shape to verbal narrative"--this was the main target Anthony Burgess set for himself before writing the Napoleon Symphony. Himself being a composer, music played a prominent role in his life, and Burgess did not separate these two fields of art, rather tried to approximate them as much as possible. Burgess never deterred from experimenting, he was famous for his strong and original linguistic power with which he wrote his novels. One of his main sources for inspiration was music. In this book the author examines two novels, A Clockwork Orange and the Napoleon Symphony from Burgess's oeuvre from a special point of view. The book presents how music and especially how symphonic structure appear in the two novels and in Burgess's art. Can music teach anything to a novelist? What is a postmodern writer might learn from this art? These questions are being answered in this book.