Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2018

Music and the Environment in Dystopian Narrative

Sounding the Disaster

Authors:

  • Appeals to scholars working in literature, musicology, media studies, and environmental humanities
  • Considers music as environmental art within a narrative context
  • Draws on theories of intermediality and textual performativity

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Music and Literature (PASTMULI)

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
  2. Introduction

    • Heidi Hart
    Pages 1-14
  3. Mozart in Space: A Love Story

    • Heidi Hart
    Pages 15-30
  4. Sounding the Hurricane: Mahagonny

    • Heidi Hart
    Pages 73-88
  5. Back Matter

    Pages 99-100

About this book

Music and the Environment in Dystopian Narrative: Sounding the Disaster investigates the active role of music in film and fiction portraying climate crisis. From contemporary science fiction and environmental film to “Anthropocene opera,” the most arresting eco-narratives draw less on background music than on the power of sound to move fictional action and those who receive it. Beginning with a reflection on a Mozart recording on the 1970s’ Voyager Golden Record, this book explores links between music and violence in Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2017 novel The Book of Joan, songless speech in the opera Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, interrupted lyricism in the eco-documentary Expedition to the End of the World, and dread-inducing hurricane music in the Brecht-Weill opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. In all of these works, music allows for a state of critical vulnerability in its hearers, communicating planetary crisis in an embodied way. 

 

Reviews

Music and the Environment in Dystopian Narrative: Sounding the Disaster is a fascinating study of the therapeutic role of music in an endangered universe within the Anthropocene age. Hart offers an intriguing interdisciplinary analysis of the interconnectedness of music, film, and literature as intermedial genres capable of being deployed in the service of the campaign to save the world from environmental disaster.” (Nduka Otiono, Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Coordinator, Institute of African Studies, Carleton University, Canada)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

    Heidi Hart

About the author

Heidi Hart teaches German and culture courses at Utah State University, USA. She is also a Pushcart Prize-winning poet and singer.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access