THE WRITERS FUGUE

In a groundbreaking musical-literary study, The Writer&rsquo,s Fugue, Ruth Skilbeck, Ph.D., applies what she terms the &lsquo,fugal modality&rsquo, of critical analysis to her survey of fugue in literature by authors in modernity.She uncovers profound historical connections between musical form and the alienists&rsquo, diagnosis of dissociative fugue in late nineteenth-century France. In a chapter on contemporary exiled writers and Australia, in relation to the subject, subjectivity and the modern state, she reflects on what it means to write with freedom. This has new relevance in the global era of surveillance, rising state censorship and self-censorship, statelessness, and new literary fugues. , , ,_,