‘It’s in the silence you feel you hear’

AbstractThe ekphrasis dates back to Antiquity and is firmly established as a concept in literary criticism. In 1994 W. J. T. Mitchell outlined the modern interpretation of ekphrasis as the ‘verbal representation of visual representation’. This article discusses a similar intermedial occurrence that is largely overlooked in literary theory: melophrasis, which could be defined as the ‘verbal representation of musical representation’. Using the main arguments of ekphrasis theory, the article engages in a critical dialogue with existing word and music research by Werner Wolf in particular. Instead of focusing on the mediality and formality of music in literature, this article is interested in the reading experience: the musicality evoked by melophrases. The purpose is to propose an analytical framework for literary scholars, and the article thus suggests two broad melophrastic categories inspired by film music theory and narratology: diegetic (the level of the plot/characters) and non‐diegetic (the level of the text/reader). This is demonstrated in two canonical works: a diegetic melophrasis that is the Vinteuil Sonata in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927), and the non‐diegetic fugue chapter ‘Sirens’ in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). The article argues that melophrases create aesthetic intermedial reading experiences with a significant musical quality: a feeling of hearing.