Emily Bronte and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music

by Robert K. Wallace

Overview

When Emily Brontë was studying music in Brussels in 1842, she was drawn into the city's appreciation of Beethoven. After her exposure to the works of the great composer, Brontë's creativity flourished and she went on to compose what was to be her only novel—Wuthering Heights.

In Emily Brontë and Beethoven, Robert K. Wallace continues to work from the perspective he developed in his Jane Austen and Mozart—integrating two fields that have traditionally been kept apart. Wallace compares Brontë and Beethoven through a close examination of the Romantic traits that their works share. Innovative and stimulating, Wallace's study extends literary criticism into a new context where equilibrium, balance, proportion and symmetry serve as a fulcrum to launch the reader into a new understanding of the formal parallels, the moods and emotions that connect music and literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820332956
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	08/01/2008
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

ROBERT K. WALLACE is Regents Professor of Literature at Northern Kentucky University. He is also the author of Emily Bronte and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music (Georgia); A Century of Music Making: The Lives of Josef and Rosina Lhevinne; Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright (Georgia); Frank Stella's Moby-Dick: Words and Shapes; Douglass and Melville: Anchored Together in Neighborly Style; and Thirteen Women Strong: The Making of a Team.

ROBERT K. WALLACE is Regents Professor of Literature at Northern Kentucky University. He is also the author of Emily Bronte and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music (Georgia); A Century of Music Making: The Lives of Josef and Rosina Lhevinne; Melville and Turner: Spheres of Love and Fright (Georgia); Frank Stella's Moby-Dick: Words and Shapes; Douglass and Melville: Anchored Together in Neighborly Style; and Thirteen Women Strong: The Making of a Team.

Editorial Reviews

[Wallace] has carried off a difficult and complex subject with grace and assurance. . . . In bringing Bronte and Beethoven together, moreover, Wallace has created a book that reaches beyond the two individuals he has so effectively compared to touch as well on questions of aesthetics and creativity themselves.

Victorian Studies

This challenging integrative study offers some clever analytical insights. It includes thorough notes and a useful index.

Choice

Wallace's eye-opening (and ear-dilating) accomplishment . . . has left us much to contemplate-indeed, he has made a major contribution to the study of literature and music, to our knowledge of Romanticism and European culture in the early nineteenth century, and to the refinement and coherence of our perception of masterworks of Beethoven and Emily Bronte.

National Review

Wallace's eye-opening (and ear-dilating) accomplishment . . . has left us much to contemplate-indeed, he has made a major contribution to the study of literature and music, to our knowledge of Romanticism and European culture in the early nineteenth century, and to the refinement and coherence of our perception of masterworks of Beethoven and Emily Bronte.

National Review

"[Wallace] has carried off a difficult and complex subject with grace and assurance. . . . In bringing Bronte and Beethoven together, moreover, Wallace has created a book that reaches beyond the two individuals he has so effectively compared to touch as well on questions of aesthetics and creativity themselves."--Victorian Studies

"This challenging integrative study offers some clever analytical insights. It includes thorough notes and a useful index.”--Choice

"Wallace's eye-opening (and ear-dilating) accomplishment . . . has left us much to contemplate-indeed, he has made a major contribution to the study of literature and music, to our knowledge of Romanticism and European culture in the early nineteenth century, and to the refinement and coherence of our perception of masterworks of Beethoven and Emily Bronte."--National Review

From the Publisher