The Matter of Song in Early Modern England : Texts in and of the Air

Name: The Matter of Song in Early Modern England : Texts in and of the Air
Brand: Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

The Matter of Song in Early Modern EnglandTexts in and of the Air\nAuthor(s): Katherine R. Larson\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Oxford University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Oxford University Press\nISBN-13: 9780192865526, 978-0192865526\nSynopsis\nGiven the variety and richness of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English 'songscape', it might seem unsurprising to suggest that early modern song needs to be considered as sung. When a reader encounters a song in a sonnet sequence, a romance, and even a masque or a play, however, the tendency is to engage with it as poem rather than as musical performance. Opening up the notion of song from a performance-based perspective, The Matter of Song in Early Modern England considers the implications of reading song not simply as lyric text but as an embodied and gendered musical practice.\n\nAnimating the traces of song preserved in physiological and philosophical commentaries, singing handbooks, poetic treatises, and literary texts .