Songs, singers, and their audiences in three texts by Marie NDiaye

Close readings explore three works by Marie NDiaye in which song plays a crucial role. The nature of the song and the singer differs in each text. In La Naufragée [‘The Shipwrecked Woman’], the power of the song of an unattractive sirène (a woman-fish) is expressed through a complex ekphrasis featuring the paintings of J. M. W. Turner. In Un pas de chat sauvage [‘A Wild Cat’s Step’], a nineteenth-century singer is re-created by a twenty-first century avatar. One of her songs is identified but the nature of the others emerges from the historical context, documented in the text. In Mon coeur à l’étroit [ My Heart Hemmed In ], traditional songs call back an estranged daughter to her mother. These dense texts reveal a struggle for control between singer and audience and a racialized tension, both exposed and overcome by the power of music to cut across prejudice and cultures.