Intermediality in 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet' : The function of music in Rushdie's novel

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,7, Free University of Berlin (Fachbereich Englisch), course: Literary Concepts II: Intermediality , language: English, abstract: [...] In his seventh novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (hereafter GF), Rushdie tells the love story of the 20th century pop icons Vina Aspara and Ormus Cama. However, GF is not exclusively about love since the novel also combines a lot of historical and mythological aspects with the mainstream pop culture of the 20th century. In fact, the field of pop music seems to be central next to the novel's love theme because throughout the whole book, extracts of original and remodelled song lyrics are incorporated into the texture of GF, and these song lyrics are - amongst many other things - used to reflect the love between the novel's protagonists. Furthermore, the subject of music is also realised by the adoption of another strategy. Although the novel is said to be fictional, GF "tries to blur the edges between the fictional world and the real world" [Rushdie, interview with Vijaya Nagarajan 1999]. Therefore, Rushdie applied the technique of the alienation effect, which aims to make the familiar seem strange. This technique was predominantly realised by embedding mythological aspects in the story of GF and changing historical events which actually happened. Consequently, Rushdie created a "parallel version of the world", which is slightly different from reality. The most influential aspect which makes the familiar life of the novel's pop stars seem strange is its comparison with the Orpheus myth. Moreover, the Orpheus myth dignifies music as it basically declares that 'one can kill the singer, but not the song.' Since the subject of music seems to be of crucial importance in GF, and Salman Rushdie regards pop music as the "first cultural phenomenon of extraordinary force" [Rushdie, interview with Vijaya Nagarajan 1999], this paper aims to explore which differ