Abstract
This essay traces medievalist nostalgia in the representations of music in fantasy fiction. I argue that, in high fantasy fiction of the Tolkien/Lewis tradition, music and the medieval function as joint, mutually enriching indicators of a blissful, paradisal state promised to the reader. Fantasy fiction in this tradition writes the blissful object of desire in a form of apophatic discourse, using language in a way which undoes its signifying function in order to indicate a bliss which cannot be described. But since, as Susan Stewart asserts (and I will argue) ‘nostalgia is the desire for desire’ (Stewart, 1993, 23), fantasy fiction does not keep its promise to the reader. Its indications work to fend off the bliss, instead sustaining the reader in the unending enjoyment of unsatisfied desire.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Addison, J . 1975. The Spacious Firmament on High. In The Norton Anthology of Poetry, rev. edn., eds. H. Barrows, A.W. Allison and A.M. Eastman, 443–444. New York: Norton.
Adorno, T . 2007. Music and Language: A Fragment. In On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts. Vol. 2: Modern and Contemporary Transformations, ed. W. Franke, 262–270. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Aristotle . 1986. De Anima, trans. H. Lawson-Tancred. London: Penguin.
Barnhouse, R . 2000. Recasting the Past: The Middle Ages in Young Adult Literature. Porthouse, NH: Heinemann.
Bataille, G . 2001. The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, ed. S. Kendall, trans. M. and S. Kendall. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Baudrillard, J . 1983. Simulations, trans. P. Foss, P. Patton and P. Beitchmann. New York: Semiotext(e).
Boethius . 1989. Fundamentals of Music, trans. C. M. Bower, ed. C. V. Palisca. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Bradley, M.Z . 2001. The Mists of Avalon. New York: Random House.
Butler, C . 2006. Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper. Lanham, MD: Children's Literature Association and Scarecrow Press.
Cooper, S . 1973. The Dark Is Rising. New York: Alladin Paperbacks.
Cooper, S . 2000. Silver on the Tree. New York: Alladin Paperbacks.
Dahlhaus, C . 1989. The Idea of Absolute Music, trans. Roger Lustig. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
De Saussure, F . 1974. Course in General Linguistics, rev. edn., eds. C. Bally, A. Sechehaye and A. Reidlinger, trans. Wade Baskin. Glasgow, UK: Fontana-Collins.
Dunsany, E . 1999. The King of Elfland's Daughter. New York: Random House.
Eliade, M . 1996. Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Fradenburg, L.O.A . 1997. ‘So That We May Speak of Them’: Enjoying the Middle Ages. New Literary History 28 (2): 205–230.
Garner, A . 2006. Elidor. Orlando, FL: Harcourt.
Godwin, J., ed. 1992. The Harmony of the Spheres: A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International.
Hoeckner, B . 2002. Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kalinak, K . 1992. Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Kay, G.G . 2006a. The Summer Tree. London: Voyager.
Kay, G.G . 2006b. The Wandering Fire. London: Voyager.
Lacan, J . 1958. Seminar 17: Wednesday, 26 March 1958. In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book V: Formations of the Unconscious, 1957–1958, trans. Cormac Gallagher from unedited French transcripts, http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/?page_id=123.
Lacan, J. 1963. Seminar 12: Wednesday, 27 February 1963. In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X: Anxiety, 1962–1963, trans. Cormac Gallagher from unedited French transcripts, http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/?page_id=123.
Lacan, J . 1981. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan. New York: Norton.
Lacan, J . 1997. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960. In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VII, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. D. Porter. New York: Norton.
Lacan, J . 1999. On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge. In The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: Encore 1972–1973, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. B. Fink. New York: Norton.
Lacan, J . 2006. The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious. In Écrits, trans. B. Fink with H. Fink and R. Grigg, 412–441. New York: Norton.
L'Engle, M . 2005. A Wrinkle in Time. New York: Yearling.
Lewis, C.S . 1966. Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, ed. W. Hooper. London: Bles.
Lewis, C.S . 2005. The Chronicles of Narnia. London: HarperCollins.
Lowenthal, D . 1985. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
MacDonald, G . 2000. Lilith: A Romance, intro. C.S. Lewis. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Plato . 1994–2009. The Republic, trans. B. Jowett, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.4.iii.html, accessed 27 May 2010.
Plato . 1996. Plato's Sophist or The Professor of Wisdom, trans. E. Brann, P. Kalkavage and E. Salem. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing.
Sells, M.A . 1994. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Stewart, S . 1993. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Tolkien, J.R.R . 1966. The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantyne.
Tolkien, J.R.R . 2000. Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien: A Selection, ed. H. Carpenter. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dell, H. ‘Yearning for the sweet beckoning sound’: Musical longings and the unsayable in medievalist fantasy fiction. Postmedieval 2, 171–185 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2011.3
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2011.3