Sonic Bodies : Text, Music, and Silence in Late Medieval England / Tekla Bude.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bude, Tekla, author.

Series:

Sound in history.

Sound in History

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English literature.

Music--500-1400--Philosophy and aesthetics.

Music.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 267 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2022]

Summary:

"What is the body when it performs music? And what, conversely, is music as it reverberates through or pours out of a performing body? Tekla Bude starts from a single premise -- that music requires a body to perform it -- to rethink the relationship between music, matter, and the body in the late medieval period. Progressing by way of a series of case studies of texts by Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Margery Kempe, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and others, Bude argues that writers thought of "music" and "the body" not as separate objects or ontologically prior categories, but as mutually dependent and historically determined processes that called each other into being in complex and shifting ways. For Bude, these "sonic bodies" are often unexpected, peculiar, even bizarre, and challenge our understanding of their constitutive parts. Building on recent conversations about embodiment and the voice in literary criticism and music theory, Sonic Bodies makes two major interventions across these fields: first, it broadens the definitional ambits and functions of both "music" and "the body" in the medieval period; and second, it demonstrates how embodiment and musicality are deeply and multiply intertwined in medieval writing. Compelling literary subjects, Bude argues, are literally built out of musical situations."

Contents:

Writing Sonic Bodies

Musica Celestis and Canor: angelic song in speculative music theory and Rollean mysticism

Touching music: Walter Hilton, angels' song, and synaesthesia

Attending to The boke of Margery Kempe

Music, Amicitia, and Carthusian mystical diaries

Pieres Plowman, the sound-object, and the singing community

Disability, music, and Chaucer's Advental bodies

Coda.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Bude, Tekla Sonic Bodies

ISBN:

9780812298321

OCLC:

1301546294