The Lyric Myth of Voice: Civilizing Song in Enlightenment Italy

by Jessica Gabriel Peritz

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520380806
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	11/15/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	13 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Jessica Gabriel Peritz is Assistant Professor of Music and Affiliated Faculty in Italian Studies and Early Modern Studies at Yale University.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables
Editorial Principles

Introduction 
1 • The Poet Sings
2 • The Orfeo Act
3 • Civilizing Song
4 • Domesticating the Tenth Muse
5 • Sublime Suffering and the Good Mother
Epilogue

Acknowledgments 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index