Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté. Image fixe : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Karlin, Daniel (1953-....)
Titre(s) : The figure of the singer [Texte imprimé] / Daniel Karlin
Publication : Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013
Description matérielle : xix, 210 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm
Comprend : Introduction: two singers ; Song and power: the bard ; 'A sound of the heart's
unrest': women poets as singers in the nineteenth century ; Hark! Nineteenth-century
poetry and the song of birds ; Songs in books (1): Pippa Passes ; Songs in books
(2): The Princess ; Aurora Leigh: expressing the old scripture ; Walt Whitman: song
and the making of poems ; Thomas Hardy: bygone occasions ; 'Columbia recording artist
Bob Dylan'.
Note(s) : Includes bibliographical references and index
"Why did poets continue to call themselves singers, and their poems songs, long after
the formal link between poetry and music had been severed? Daniel Karlin explores
the origin and meaning of the "figure of the singer," tracing its roots in classical
mythology and in the Bible, and following its rise from the 'adventurous song' of
Milton's Paradise Lost to its apotheosis in the nineteenth century--by which time
it had also become an oppressive cliche. Poets might embrace, or resist, this dominant
figure of their art, but could not ignore it. Shadowing the metaphor is another figure,
that of the literal singer, a source of fascination, and rivalry, to poets who are
confined to words on the page. The book opens with an emblematic figure of the greatest
of all "singers": Homer, playing his lyre, at the center of the frieze of poets on
the Albert Memorial in London. Chapters on the tragicomic rise and fall of "the bard,"
on the link between female song and suffering, and on the metaphor of poetry as birdsong,
are followed by detailed readings of poems by Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, Walt Whitman, and Thomas Hardy. The final chapter, on the songs
of Bob Dylan, suggests that recording technology has given fresh impetus to the quarrel
(which is also a love-affair) between poetic language and song. The Figure of the
Singer offers a profound and stimulating analysis of the idea of poetry as song and
of the complex, troubled relations between voice and text."--Publisher's website
Sujet(s) : Poètes
Poésie
Musique et littérature
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 9780199213986 (hardback). - ISBN 0199213984 (hardback)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb44276241d
Notice n° :
FRBNF44276241
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)
