Music and Metamorphosis in Graeco-Roman Thought

Examines questions raised, in antiquity and now, by mythical narratives about humans transforming into non-human musical beings.

List of contents

Introduction; 1. Forest: on surrounds; 2. Ringdove: on the uncanny power of performance; 3. Cicadas: on the voice; 4. Echo: on listening; 5. Reeds: on musical objects; 6. Nightingale: on expression; 7. Beetle: on rhythm.

About the author

Pauline A. LeVen is an Associate Professor of Classics at Yale University, Connecticut. She is the author of The Many-Headed Muse: Tradition and Innovation in Late Classical Greek Lyric Poetry (Cambridge, 2014), which received the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Yale College Prize for outstanding publication. She is also co-editor, with Sean Gurd, of the first volume of A Cultural History of Western Music (forthcoming) and currently at work on two monographs – one entitled Poetry and the Posthuman, the other devoted to music and mortality. A member of MOISA (the Society for the Study of Greek and Roman Music and its Cultural Heritage), she has taken an active role in promoting and disseminating the study of ancient Greek and Roman musical culture.

Summary

Examines aesthetic and ontological questions raised by Greco-Roman myths of human metamorphosis into non-human musical beings. Placing the myths within their ancient intellectual contexts, it reads them in dialogue with contemporary questions about what it means to be human. Aimed at classicists, musicologists, and scholars of the posthumanities.

Product details

• Authors: Pauline A Leven, Pauline A. LeVen, Pauline A. (Yale University Leven
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.03.2022
• EAN: 9781316602638
• ISBN: 978-1-316-60263-8
• No. of pages: 289
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art; Latin, HISTORY / Ancient / General, Ancient Greece, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Ancient Rome, Music reviews & criticism, Music reviews and criticism, Ancient (Classical) Greek, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval