'The whole thing was a sort of song': Blues and Jazz in the Works of Gayl Jones

“整件事都是一首歌”：盖尔·琼斯作品中的布鲁斯和爵士乐

• 批准号: 2408228
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2408228
• 关键词: whole; thing; was; sort; song

This project will explore jazz and the blues in the work of Gayl Jones, seeking to discern precisely how Jones translates or transcribes musical techniques into literary ones and renders her written texts distinctly oral. My central research enquiry will be to decipher the aesthetic and political purposes Jones' musical techniques serve. In answering this, I will explore the way in which they can facilitate psychological recovery from trauma, assert individual, national, and racial identity, and absorb and confront the enduring legacy and residual traces of slavery in modern America. In this way, the project will employ a methodology that endeavours to combine the study of form and content, confronting Jones' thematic concerns and politics, so often dismissed as problematic, by investigating how they are expressed by her musical techniques. The project will contextualise Jones' orality within the traditions of both African American folklore and storytelling, and of female blues singers. I will discuss how her works' engagement with these contexts manifests Jones' participation within the Black Arts Movement. The mechanics of her orality will also be investigated; exploring how exactly Jones makes her texts heard and the implied relationship between her audible texts and music. I will then discuss Jones' musical techniques in detail and the political function they serve her texts. For example, Jones' syncopation, the tension in her work between solo voices and the ensemble, her silence, repetition, and use of the blue note will all be examined.This study seeks to redress an imbalance by attending to the work of a much-neglected author. It will take account of her entire oeuvre, including her later novels and poetry collections that have received startlingly little attention, and her newly released six volume 'Palmares'. In considering Jones' musical techniques, this project will acknowledge and investigate Jones' innovative and experimental formal skill that has been subsumed by critical attention, often hostile, to her work's thematic content. Timely with the recent republication of some of Jones' novels, the project will hopefully amplify a significantly aural, but often over-looked voice.

该项目将探索盖尔·琼斯作品中的爵士乐和布鲁斯，试图准确辨别琼斯如何将音乐技巧翻译或转录为文学技巧，并将她的书面文本呈现为明显的口头形式。我的中心研究探究将是破译琼斯的音乐技巧所服务的美学和政治目的。在回答这个问题时，我将探讨它们如何促进从创伤中恢复心理，维护个人、民族和种族身份，并吸收和面对现代美国奴隶制的持久遗产和残余痕迹。通过这种方式，该项目将采用一种方法论，努力将形式和内容的研究结合起来，通过调查琼斯的音乐技巧如何表达这些内容，来面对琼斯经常被视为有问题的主题关注和政治。该项目将琼斯的口语融入非裔美国民间传说和讲故事以及女布鲁斯歌手的传统中。我将讨论她的作品与这些背景的接触如何体现琼斯对黑人艺术运动的参与。她的口语技巧也将受到调查；探索琼斯到底如何让她的文本被听到以及她的可听文本和音乐之间的隐含关系。然后我将详细讨论琼斯的音乐技巧以及它们为她的文本服务的政治功能。例如，琼斯的切分音、她作品中独唱与合奏之间的紧张关系、她的沉默、重复和蓝色音符的使用都将受到检验。这项研究旨在通过关注一位被严重忽视的作家的作品来纠正这种不平衡。它将考虑到她的全部作品，包括她后来很少受到关注的小说和诗集，以及她新发行的六卷本《帕尔马雷斯》。在考虑琼斯的音乐技巧时，该项目将承认并研究琼斯的创新和实验形式技巧，这些技巧已被对她作品的主题内容的批判性关注（通常是敌意的）所包含。随着琼斯的一些小说最近重新出版，该项目有望放大明显可听但经常被忽视的声音。