Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture) (Paperback)

by Bruce Holsinger (Author) "The inclusion of a background section focusing on early Christian culture in a book concerned primarily with the high and later Middle Ages carries certain..." (more)
Key Phrases: polyphonic perversity, vos angeli, musical violence, Middle Ages, Notre Dame, Hildegard of Bingen (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“What a wonderful book! It will change the whole way we look at, read, and listen to the Middle Ages. Holsinger’s grasp of the history of Latin and vernacular literature, philosophy, art, and history as it pertains to his topic, is breathtaking. What holds the whole argument together is [the author’s superb grasp of] music.”—Michael Camille, University of Chicago

“The book is interesting, intriguing, and provides a valuable model for new ways of approaching musical repertory.”—Notes

“Provides a very close reading of a wide range of texts from late Antiquity to the early modern period that deal with the corporeal production and reception of music . . . .Some of these texts are well known to musicologists or students of literature, but few scholars of any stripe would know all of them or even the majority intimately. Scholars of literature and music, and of culture in general, will therefore find much of interest here as well as an important synthesis of many of the most colorful passages on music from the writings of this period.”—Echo: A Music-Centered Journal

Product Description
“What a wonderful book! It will change the whole way we look at, read, and listen to the Middle Ages. Holsinger’s grasp of the history of Latin and vernacular literature, philosophy, art, and history as it pertains to his topic, is breathtaking. What holds the whole argument together is music, and it is the author’s superb grasp of the theoretical and performative aspects of the history of vocal and instrumental expression that makes this a musicological equivalent of John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality and just as groundbreaking.”

Michael Camille
University of Chicago

Ranging chronologically from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries and thematically from Latin to vernacular literary modes, this book challenges standard assumptions about the musical cultures and philosophies of the European Middle Ages. Engaging a wide range of premodern texts and contexts, from the musicality of sodomy in twelfth-century polyphony to Chaucer’s representation of pedagogical violence in the Prioress’s Tale, from early Christian writings on the music of the body to the plainchant and poetry of Hildegard of Bingen, the author argues that medieval music was quintessentially a practice of the flesh.

The book reveals a sonorous landscape of flesh and bone, pleasure and pain, a medieval world in which erotic desire, sexual practice, torture, flagellation, and even death itself resonated with musical significance and meaning. In its insistence on music as an integral part of the material cultures of the Middle Ages, the book presents a revisionist account of an important aspect of premodern European civilization that will be of compelling interest to historians of literature, music, religion, and sexuality, as well as scholars of cultural, gender, and queer studies.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (June 11, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804740585
• ISBN-13: 978-0804740586
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #984,543 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)