The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
'This article examines some of the rich and complex ways in which music
plays an integral role in the works of Patrick White. While there is an
increasing body of writings on analogies between music and fiction, there is
as yet no comprehensive study of the extensive use of music in Australian
poetry and fiction, and none written from the perspective of a musicologist.
White belongs to a strong tradition of writers in Australia who are or were
in various senses musical; that is, either they make specific references to
pieces of music in their writing, they deploy musical structures and
techniques, or the way in which they write is inherently musical' (p. 23).
