摘要
The purpose of the present paper is to explore Edgar Lawrence Doctorow’s novel Ragtime(1975)as a masterful adaptation of musical form in fiction.It demonstrates the ways in which the use of musical devices of Ragtime shapes the rhythmic/narrative structure of the novel.The article offers the reading of the novel as a musicalized fiction,or,in other words,as a form of musico-literary intermediality.It focuses on the chief characteristics of Doctorow’s novel such as a plurality of independent consciousnesses and a diversity of simultaneous points of view/voices.The novel by its very design is polyphonic.Manipulating polyrhythmic effects,mixed rhythms,repetitive phrases and leitmotifs,Doctorow is experimenting with the rhythm both on micro and macro textual levels.