The truth of a song : a study of the function and meaning of music in the novels and selected writings of Elizabeth Madox Roberts

This study explores Elizabeth Madox Roberts' use of classical, popular, folk, and sacred music as well as the music of nature in her novels, short stories, and poems. Roberts' unpublished papers, letters, and manuscripts from The Library of Congress, The Filson Club of Louisville, Kentucky, and St. Catharine College, St. Catharine, Kentucky, are employed to provide insights into the author's beliefs about literary composition, music, and why she attempted to blend together these two forms of art. This study describes Roberts' belief that all music is a revelation of something she calls "pattern," "design," or "form," words that are synonymous with both art and her conception of the way the divine is revealed to man. She wrote that man's understanding of "form" or "pattern" is a "message from beyond" and the only point at which "we can touch God." Hence, when she defines music as "pattern in motion," she is suggesting that music is the divine "in motion" and that through music one can sense God's force at work. Thus, her attempts to reflect the structure of such musical compositions as Beethoven's Sixth and Ninth Symphonies in her novels, as well as the use of the lyrics of inumberable ballads, songs, and hymns throughout her work, show her fascination with the patterned regularities of music, prose, and poetry, which to her were all earthly evidence of a creative God.