Poe and the Idea of Music (eBook)

Failure, Transcendence, and Dark Romanticism

Charity McAdams (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
170 Seiten
Lehigh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-61146-205-0 (ISBN)

Infos

The selling point of this book I think is that it's the only book that addresses Edgar Allan Poe's use of music from a purely literary standpoint.

---

Edgar Allan Poe often set the scenes of his stories and poems with music: angels have the heartstrings of lutes, spirits dance, and women speak with melodic voices. These musical ideas appear to mimic the ways other authors, particularly Romanticists, used music in their works to represent a spiritual ideal artistic realm. Music brought forth the otherworldly, and spoke to the possible transcendence of the human spirit. Yet, Poe's music differs from these Romantic notions in ways that, although not immediately perceptible in each individual instance, cohere to invert Romantic idealism. For Poe, artistic transcendence is impossible, the metaphysical realm is unreachable, and humans cannot perceive anything but their own failure of spirit. In this book, I show how we can look at Poe's poems and stories on the whole to discover this, and in doing so, unpack some of Poe's mysticism along the way.

Autor

Charity McAdams is professor in the Honors department at Arizona State University.

Inhalt

AcknowledgementsIntroduction1Is This Divine? No, This is the Voice of a Woman.Madame Malibran: The Very Genius of Music“The Spectacles”: In Imitation of MalibranThe Alchemy of Unreason: Well and Strenuously Sung!2Another Kind of Musician Altogether“The Fall of the House of Usher”: The Guitar and the BalladThe Case of the Ballad“Ulalume”: Faëry BalletIndefinitiveness: The True Musical Expression“Annabel Lee”: The Sounding Sea“The Haunted Palace”: Spirits Moving Musically3An Almost Magical Melody“Ligeia”: Siren Who Never Sings4The Wantonest Singing BirdsPoems as Songs in Language, Aim, and PurposeVentum Textilem: The Veil of the SoulMere Words: Birdsong“Fanny”: Wild Death Song, Sweet and Clear“Romance”: Unless It Trembled with the Strings“Nameless Here For Evermore”: To Sing Well is to Avoid Naming5The Starry Choir (And Other Listening Things)Music of the Spheres: Music, in Our Own More Limited Sense of the Word“Al Aaraaf”: Music of the Passion-Hearted“Israfel”: Sweetest Voice of All God’s CreaturesPower of Words: The Naiad Voice that Addresses Them From Below6But Gradually my Songs They Ceased“The Cask of Amontillado”: The Conical Cap and Bells“The Bells”: What a World of Solemn Thought Their Monody Compels“A Pæan”: The Requiem for the Loveliest Dead“The Masque of the Red Death”: The Music Swells, and the Dreams Live, and WritheConclusionAppendixAn Inherited Musical TalentThe Idea without Music: Decontextualizing Poe‘The Rational Agent of Enchantment Itself’: Absolute Music and the Music of the SpheresBibliography

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.10.2017
• Reihe/Serie: Perspectives on Edgar Allan Poe
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Horror
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: American Literature • Literary Studies • World literature
• ISBN-10: 1-61146-205-3 / 1611462053
• ISBN-13: 978-1-61146-205-0 / 9781611462050