Sounds and Music in Slovenian Narrative Texts of the Twentieth Century

An introductory look at the interdisciplinary field that, in line with global trends, can be called music and literature studies, or word and music studies, gives the possibility to present some important achievements of this field in Slovenian scientific and artistic literature. This article analyses the interaction of sounds, music, and literature in four twentieth-century Slovenian narrative texts, written respectively by Ivan Cankar, Milan Pugelj, Ciril Kosmač, and Rudi Šeligo. The focus is not on the sonority of the prose itself (assonance, alliteration, rhythm, rhyme, and onomatopoeia), but on the effects of musical modernity on narrative forms from early modernism to the present, and therefore, on the ways in which music modernized or shaped their narrative discourse.