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Introduction to Part II: literature and music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: moving the passions: musical poetics in early modern Europe

Introduction to Part II: literature and music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: moving the passions: musical poetics in early modern Europe
Introduction to Part II: literature and music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: moving the passions: musical poetics in early modern Europe
The chapter considers sixteenth- and seventeenth-century understanding of music as an emotive force and a means of communication, whether with or without words.
It shows how pan-European education in Latin and classical rhetoric coloured musical as well as poetic theory written in Italy, Germany and England, and demonstrates the importance of repetition and metaphor in both musical and literary practice. It explores ways in which English writers exploited the particular rhythmic, rhyming, and stress characteristics of the English language according to an understanding of musical ‘proportion’ which even allows the construction of silence within the line.
The argument concludes with a case study of the opening of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night where actual stage music prompts a long speech in which the physical properties of the character’s words (the use of long vowels; consecutively stressed syllables) create a synaesthesia of sound, scent, image, and semantics.
passions, emotions, music theory, classical rhetoric, repetition, silence, poetic metre, rhythm, musica poetica
147-160
Edinburgh University Press
King, Ros
7b27456c-0da8-432b-a82f-ee19af23d4fb
da Sousa Correa, Delia
King, Ros
King, Ros
7b27456c-0da8-432b-a82f-ee19af23d4fb
da Sousa Correa, Delia
King, Ros

King, Ros (2020) Introduction to Part II: literature and music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: moving the passions: musical poetics in early modern Europe. In, da Sousa Correa, Delia and King, Ros (eds.) The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music. Edinburgh University Press, pp. 147-160.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

The chapter considers sixteenth- and seventeenth-century understanding of music as an emotive force and a means of communication, whether with or without words.
It shows how pan-European education in Latin and classical rhetoric coloured musical as well as poetic theory written in Italy, Germany and England, and demonstrates the importance of repetition and metaphor in both musical and literary practice. It explores ways in which English writers exploited the particular rhythmic, rhyming, and stress characteristics of the English language according to an understanding of musical ‘proportion’ which even allows the construction of silence within the line.
The argument concludes with a case study of the opening of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night where actual stage music prompts a long speech in which the physical properties of the character’s words (the use of long vowels; consecutively stressed syllables) create a synaesthesia of sound, scent, image, and semantics.

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More information

Published date: March 2020
Keywords: passions, emotions, music theory, classical rhetoric, repetition, silence, poetic metre, rhythm, musica poetica

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 469630
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/469630
PURE UUID: 9e06d3c4-725d-4b21-8dbb-b087336ce53f

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Date deposited: 21 Sep 2022 16:53
Last modified: 21 Sep 2022 16:53

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Contributors

Author: Ros King
Editor: Delia da Sousa Correa
Editor: Ros King

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