Journal article
The Architecture of Song
Text, Vol.14(Special Issue 7), pp.1-6
2010
Abstract
RESEARCH BACKGROUND: Several iconic novels utilise an architectural construction to personify a character. Bronte (1987), Naipaul (1961), Stow (1981), Kafka (1971), Coetzee (1983) and the phenomenological works of Bachelard (1994) and Heidegger (2000) extend the personification of 'the house as a character' to the concept of 'the dwelling' as a matter of beauty, creativity, fertility and nature'; a creative link, using poetic language as its building blocks, to Heidegger's 'His (man's) dwelling, however, rests in the poetic' (Meljac 2008). RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: An architectural draughtsman, I have sustained an interest in the influence of architecture upon fiction in essays (Crew, 1992, 2001, 2009), short stories (Crew 2004), and novels (Crew 1999, 2001, 2009). The creative extract attached is from an unpublished novel entitled The Architecture of Song in which the protagonist, Augustus, a dwarf, emerges from the womb-like space beneath his mother's Laurentian piano to re-construct a variety of architectural sites using the poetics of song. Extending Heidegger's concept of the 'poetically constructed man', the extract suggests that such a character has the poetic means to 'reconstruct' persons, even as Augustus alters the character of Rosa, and ultimately, as the entire novel reveals, through the employment of the poetics of his sublime voice, to reconstruct 'the temple' of his own dwarfish body in a celebration of self. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: The Architecture of Song demonstrates creative writing research in practice through the fusion of poetry and knowledge of architectural constructions (house, tent, cathedral) to create a work of fiction. The novel is under contract to Harper Collins.
Details
- Title
- The Architecture of Song
- Authors
- Gary Crew (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
- Publication details
- Text, Vol.14(Special Issue 7), pp.1-6
- Publisher
- Australian Association of Writing Programs
- Date published
- 2010
- ISSN
- 1327-9556
- Copyright note
- Copyright © 2010 The Authors. Reproduced here with kind permission of the author.
- Organisation Unit
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Creative Industries - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99449722702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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