Sounding objects : musical instruments, poetry, and art in Renaissance France / Carla Zecher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zecher, Carla, 1959-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music and literature.

Musical instruments in art.

French literature--16th century--History and criticism.

French literature.

Physical Description:

x, 241 pages : illustrations, facsimiles ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2007]

Summary:

Musical instruments are containers for sound, and as such they offer poets a figurative means of making language corporeal, of embodying the poetic voice. When likened to a musical instrument, a poem becomes a thing. It acquires surfaces and takes on volume. Its physical characteristics may then be detailed: its size and shape, the materials of which it is made, how it is decorated, and how the player holds it and draws sound from it. Musical instruments possess a voice, albeit one that is mechanically produced rather than human. In the realm of poetic production the distinction between orality and print is comparable to that between the human voice and the voice of an instrument, since the fixing of language in print involves the mediating action of an entity distinct from language's site of origin in the human body.

Contents:

1 Of Strings, Trumpets, and the Future of French Poetry 24

2 Musical Rivalries 57

3 Musical Instruments, Governance, and Oratory 94

4 The Anatomy of the Lute 131.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (page [213-230]) and index.

ISBN:

0802090141

9780802090140

OCLC:

72261245