Output details

All is Song

All Is Song is a novel that loosely reinterprets and modernises part of the story of Socrates. Research questions include: 1 How the issues that led to Socrates’ trial and execution might arise in modern-day Britain. 2 How tolerant is modern society to philosophical scrutiny? Would we too be threatened, as Athens was, by a questioner who seeks to discredit, through reasoned argument, the things we hold true or dear? 3 How might philosophical discourse, a non-narrative form, be housed in the narrative and dramatic form of a realist novel, without doing damage to either discipline in the process? The novel came into being as part of a PhD thesis on writing philosophical fiction, and as such it is itself an exploration of how to go about working philosophical discourse into a realist novel. This is a question that has persisted, unresolved, in philosophy, literary theory, and amongst novelists for decades. All Is Song uses its protagonist to embody and live out a philosophical position, and to see what impact he has on the individuals and society around him – not least on his brother. It is in part a fraternal love story. The reader should only be left with the suspicion that, whether or not the specific questions themselves are immutable, philosophy, as a subject for life and novels, is not dead.