Download or read book Enlightenment Orpheus written by Vanessa Agnew and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2008-05 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. In Enlightenment Orpheus, Vanessa Agnew examines this apparent conflict, and provocatively questions the notion of an aesthetic-philosophical break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Agnew persuasively connects the English traveler and music scholar Charles Burney with the ancient myth of Orpheus. She uses Burney as a guide through wide-ranging discussions of eighteenth-century musical travel, views on music's curative powers, interest in non-European music, and concerns about cultural identity. Arguing that what people said about music was central to some of the great Enlightenment debates surrounding such issues as human agency, cultural difference, and national identity, Agnew adds a new dimension to postcolonial studies, which has typically emphasized the literary and visual at the expense of the aural. She also demonstrates that these discussions must be viewed in context at the era's broad and well-entrenched transnational network, and emphasizes the importance of travel literature in generating knowledge at the time.A new and radically interdisciplinary approach to the question of the power of music - its aesthetic and historical interpretations and political uses - Enlightenment Orpheus will appeal to students and scholars in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, German studies, eighteenth-century history, and comparative studies.
Download or read book Enlightenment Orpheus written by Vanessa Agnew and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. In Enlightenment Orpheus, Vanessa Agnew examines this apparent conflict, and provocatively questions the notion of an aesthetic-philosophical break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Agnew persuasively connects the English traveler and music scholar Charles Burney with the ancient myth of Orpheus. She uses Burney as a guide through wide-ranging discussions of eighteenth-century musical travel, views on music's curative powers, interest in non-European music, and concerns about cultural identity. Arguing that what people said about music was central to some of the great Enlightenment debates surrounding such issues as human agency, cultural difference, and national identity, Agnew adds a new dimension to postcolonial studies, which has typically emphasized the literary and visual at the expense of the aural. She also demonstrates that these discussions must be viewed in context at the era's broad and well-entrenched transnational network, and emphasizes the importance of travel literature in generating knowledge at the time. A new and radically interdisciplinary approach to the question of the power of music - its aesthetic and historical interpretations and political uses - Enlightenment Orpheus will appeal to students and scholars in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, German studies, eighteenth-century history, and comparative studies.
Download or read book The Lyre of Orpheus written by Christopher Partridge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christopher Partridge's The Lyre of Orpheus is the first general introduction to the subject of religion and popular music. His aim in this book is to introduce a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives to be used in the study of religion and popular music and popular music subcultures.
Download or read book Representing Humanity in the Age of Enlightenment written by Alexander Cook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment era saw European thinkers increasingly concerned with what it meant to be human. This collection of essays traces the concept of ‘humanity’ through revolutionary politics, feminist biography, portraiture, explorer narratives, libertine and Orientalist fiction, the philosophy of conversation and musicology.
Download or read book Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment written by Rebecca Cypess and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-05-20 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musical salons as liminal spaces: salonnières as agents of musical culture -- Sensuality, sociability, and sympathy: musical salon practices as enactments of Enlightenment --Ephemerae and authorship in the salon of Madame Brillon -- Composition, collaboration, and the cultivation of skill in the salon of Marianna Martines -- The cultural work of collecting and performing in the salon of Sara Levy -- Musical improvisation and poetic painting in the salon of Angelica Kauffman -- Reading musically in the salon of Elizabeth Graeme -- Conclusion.
Download or read book Beethoven Freedom written by Daniel K L Chua and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two centuries, Beethoven's music has been synonymous with the idea of freedom, in particular a freedom embodied in the heroic figure of Prometheus. This image arises from a relatively small circle of heroic works from the composer's middle period, most notably the Eroica Symphony. However, the freedom associated with the Promethean hero has also come under considerably critique by philosophers, theologians and political theorists; its promise of autonomy easily inverts into various forms of authoritarianism, and the sovereign will it champions is not merely a liberating force but a discriminatory one. Beethoven's freedom, then, appears to be increasingly problematic; yet his music is still employed today to mark political events from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the attacks of 9/11. Even more problematic, perhaps, is the fact that this freedom has shaped the reception of Beethoven music to such an extent that we forget that there is another kind of music in his oeuvre that is not heroic, a music that opens the possibility of a freedom yet to be articulated or defined. By exploring the musical philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno through a wide range of the composer's music, Beethoven and Freedom arrives at a markedly different vision of freedom. Author Daniel KL Chua suggests that a more human and fragile concept of freedom can be found in the music that has less to do with the autonomy of the will and its stoical corollary than with questions of human relation, donation, and a yielding to radical alterity. Chua's work makes a major and controversial statement by challenging the current image of Beethoven, and by suggesting an alterior freedom that can speak ethically to the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers written by Kate Darian-Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-11 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning the late 18th century to the present, this volume explores new directions in imperial and postcolonial histories of conciliation, performance, and conflict between European colonizers and Indigenous peoples in Australia and the Pacific Rim, including Aotearoa New Zealand, Hawaii and the Northwest Pacific Coast. It examines cultural "rituals" and objects; the re-enactments of various events and encounters of exchange, conciliation and diplomacy that occurred on colonial frontiers between non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples; commemorations of historic events; and how the histories of colonial conflict and conciliation are politicized in nation-building and national identities.
Download or read book The Lyric Myth of Voice written by Jessica Gabriel Peritz and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did "voice" become a metaphor for selfhood in the Western imagination? The Lyric Myth of Voice situates the emergence of an ideological connection between voice and subjectivity in late eighteenth-century Italy, where long-standing political anxieties and new notions of cultural enlightenment collided in the mythical figure of the lyric poet-singer. Ultimately, music and literature together shaped the singing voice into a tool for civilizing modern Italian subjects. Drawing on a range of approaches and frameworks from historical musicology to gender studies, disability studies, anthropology, and literary theory, Jessica Gabriel Peritz shows how this ancient yet modern myth of voice attained interpretable form, flesh, and sound. The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the AMS 75 PAYS Fund of the American Musicological Society, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Download or read book A Cultural History of the Soul written by Kocku von Stuckrad and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The soul, which dominated many intellectual debates at the beginning of the twentieth century, has virtually disappeared from the sciences and the humanities. Yet it is everywhere in popular culture—from holistic therapies and new spiritual practices to literature and film to ecological and political ideologies. Ignored by scholars, it is hiding in plain sight in a plethora of religious, psychological, environmental, and scientific movements. This book uncovers the history of the concept of the soul in twentieth-century Europe and North America. Beginning in fin de siècle Germany, Kocku von Stuckrad examines a fascination spanning philosophy, the sciences, the arts, and the study of religion, as well as occultism and spiritualism, against the backdrop of the emergence of experimental psychology. He then explores how and why the United States witnessed a flowering of ideas about the soul in popular culture and spirituality in the latter half of the century. Von Stuckrad examines an astonishingly wide range of figures and movements—ranging from Ernest Renan, Martin Buber, and Carl Gustav Jung to the Esalen Institute, deep ecology, and revivals of shamanism, animism, and paganism to Rachel Carson, Ursula K. Le Guin, and the Harry Potter franchise. Revealing how the soul remains central to a culture that is only seemingly secular, this book casts new light on the place of spirituality, religion, and metaphysics in Europe and North America today.
Download or read book The Hero s Quest and the Cycles of Nature written by Rachel S. McCoppin and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-10-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This examination of the heroic journey in world mythology casts the protagonist as a personification of nature--a "botanical hero" one might say--who begins the quest in a metaphorical seed-like state, then sprouts into a period of verdant strength. But the hero must face a mythic underworld where he or she contends with mortality and sacrifice--embracing death as a part of life. For centuries, humans have sought superiority over nature, yet the botanical hero finds nothing is lost by recognizing that one is merely a part of nature. Instead, a cyclical promise of continuous life is realized, in which no element fully disappears, and the hero's message is not to dwell on death.
Download or read book The Dance of Consciousness written by Douglas A. Mackey and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The system of "seven states of consciousness" articulated by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi forms the basis of this unusual critique of modern literature. In seven chapters, "Invitation to the Dance," "Absurdity," "Transcendence," "Enlightenment," "Celebration," "Unity," and "The Enlightened Artist," Douglas Mackey here examines fourteen well-known writers and their equally well-known works.
Download or read book The Magic of the Orphic Hymns written by Tamra Lucid and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-08-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recaptures the magical vitality of the original Orphic Hymns • Presents literary translations of the teletai that restore important esoteric details and correspondences about the being or deity to which each hymn is addressed • Includes messages inscribed on golden leaves meant to be passports for the dead as well as a reinvention of a lost hymn to Number that preserves the original mystical intent of the teletai • Explores the obscure origins and the evolution of the Orpheus myth, revealing a profound influence on countercultures throughout Western history As famous Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino wrote, “No magic is more powerful than that of the Orphic Hymns.” These legendary teletai of Orpheus were not simply “hymns”—they were initiatic poems for meditation and ritual, magical, and ceremonial use, each one addressed to a specific deity, such as Athena or Zeus, or a virtue, such as Love, Justice, and Equality. Yet despite the mystical concepts underlying them, the original hymns were formulaic, creating an obstacle for translators. Recapturing the magical vitality that inspired mystery cults through the ages, Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac present new versions of the teletai that include important esoteric details and correspondences about the being or deity to which each hymn is addressed. The authors also include a new version of a lost hymn called “Number” and messages that were inscribed on golden leaves meant to be passports for the dead, reinventions that preserve the original magical intent and mysticism of the teletai. Revealing the power of the individual hymns to attune the reader to the sacred presence of the Orphic Mysteries and the higher order of nature, the authors also show how, taken together, the Orphic Hymns are a book of hours or a calendar of life, addressing every event, from birth to death, and walking us through all the experiences of human existence as necessary and holy.
Download or read book Acoustic Jurisprudence written by James E. K. Parker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Acoustic Jurisprudence' provides a detailed study of the trial of Simon Bikindi, who was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda of inciting genocide with his songs. Using Bikindi as a case study, this book develops the many relations between law and sound, and the importance of sound in legal practice more widely.
Download or read book Music Society Agency written by Nancy November and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musicologists have increasingly taken a wide-angled lens on the study of music in society, to explore how it can be intertwined with issues of politics, gender, religion, race, psychology, memory, and space. Recent studies of music in connection with society take in a variety of musical phenomena from diverse periods and genres—medieval, classical, opera, rock, etc. This ten-chapter book not only asks how music and society are, and have been, intertwined and mutually influential, but it also examines the agents behind these connections: who determines musical cultures in society? Which social groups are represented in particular musical contexts? Which social groups are silenced or less well represented in music’s histories, and why?
Download or read book This Thing Called the World written by Debjani Ganguly and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In This Thing Called the World Debjani Ganguly theorizes the contemporary global novel and the social and historical conditions that shaped it. Ganguly contends that global literature coalesced into its current form in 1989, an event marked by the convergence of three major trends: the consolidation of the information age, the arrival of a perpetual state of global war, and the expanding focus on humanitarianism. Ganguly analyzes a trove of novels from authors including Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje, and Art Spiegelman, who address wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sri Lanka, the Palestinian and Kashmiri crises, the Rwandan genocide, and post9/11 terrorism. These novels exist in a context in which suffering's presence in everyday life is mediated through digital images and where authors integrate visual forms into their storytelling. In showing how the evolution of the contemporary global novel is analogous to the European novel’s emergence in the eighteenth century, when society and the development of capitalism faced similar monumental ruptures, Ganguly provides both a theory of the contemporary moment and a reminder of the novel's power.
Download or read book Cultural Histories of Noise Sound and Listening in Europe 1300 1918 written by Kirsten Gibson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-18 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Histories of Noise, Sound and Listening in Europe, 1300-1918 presents a range of historical case studies on the sounding worlds of the European past. The chapters in this volume explore ways of thinking about sound historically, and seek to understand how people have understood and negotiated their relationships with the sounding world in Europe from the Middle Ages through to the early twentieth century. They consider, in particular: sound and music in the later Middle Ages; the politics of sound in the early modern period; the history of the body and perception during the Ancien Régime; and the sounds of the city in the nineteenth century and sound and colonial rule at the fin de siècle. The case studies also range in geographical orientation to include considerations not only of Britain and France, the countries most considered in European historical sound studies in English-language scholarship to date, but also Bosnia-Herzegovina, British Colonial India, Germany, Italy and Portugal. Out of this diverse group of case studies emerge significant themes that recur time and again, varying according to time and place: sound, power and identity; sound as a marker of power or violence; and sound, physiology and sensory perception and technologies of sound, consumption and meaning.
Download or read book Narrative Developments from Chaucer to Defoe written by Gerd Bayer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection analyzes how narrative technique developed from the late Middle Ages to the beginning of the 18th century. Taking Chaucer’s influential Middle English works as the starting point, the original essays in this volume explore diverse aspects of the formation of early modern prose narratives. Essays focus on how a sense of selfness or subjectivity begins to establish itself in various narratives, thus providing a necessary requirement for the individuality that dominates later novels. Other contributors investigate how forms of intertextuality inscribe early modern prose within previous traditions of literary writing. A group of chapters presents the process of genre-making as taking place both within the confines of the texts proper, but also within paratextual features and through the rationale behind cataloguing systems. A final group of essays takes the implicit notion of the growing realism of early modern prose narrative to task by investigating the various social discourses that feature ever more strongly within the social, commercial, or religious dimensions of those texts. The book addresses a wide range of literary figures such as Chaucer, Wroth, Greene, Sidney, Deloney, Pepys, Behn, and Defoe. Written by an international group of scholars, it investigates the transformations of narrative form from medieval times through the Renaissance and the early modern period, and into the eighteenth century.
