Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas

Audionarratology is enmeshed in the current trend toward media-consciousness in narratological debates. This article connect audionarratological concerns with the (trans- or inter)medial extensions of narratology offered by scholars such as Marie-Laure Ryan and Werner Wolf. It focuses on Richard Powers’s earliest musical novel, The Gold Bug Variations (1991), and his to-date latest novel Orfeo (2014), zooming in on their musical macrostructures, the musical forms and techniques that inform the narrative arrangement of the texts. Having positioned the narrative analysis of macrostructural musical elements within the research scope of a media-conscious audionarratology and having explored The Gold Bug Variations and Orfeo for such musical macrostructures, I reflect on the functions of imitating music in this way.