The Voice of Pleasure makes a persuasive and fascinating argument that the romantic couple of Western representation is not heterosexual. Nor is it homosexual. With insightful new readings of landmarks of Western culture from Tristan and Yseut to Seinfeld , Callahan demonstrates that the illusion of heterosexuality is created by a male artist's assumption of a feminine voice to express desire. Named the 'troubadour effect' for the first time here, this tradition of male femininity in romantic writing results in a cultural model of desire best described as 'heterosexuality without women.' The most compelling aspect of the book is its attention to the effect of this paradox on women writers. Illuminating her argument with striking examples from the 'troubairitz' to Toni Morrison, the author shows how women writers inscribe their 'vagabondage,' a term she coins to name the consequences of the 'troubadour effect' for women's agency, as both writers and lovers.

This volume brings together literary and musical compositions of medieval France, including the Occitanian region, identifying the use of voice in these works as a way of articulating gendered identities. The contributors to this volume argue that because medieval texts were often read or sung aloud, voice is central for understanding the performance, transmission, and reception of work from the period across a wide variety of genres. These essays offer close readings of narrative and lyric poetry, chivalric romance, sermons, letters, political writing, motets, troubadour and trouvère lyric, crusade songs, love songs, and debate songs. Through literary, musical, and historiographical analyses, contributors highlight the voicing of gendered perspectives, expressions of sexuality, and power dynamics. The volume includes feminist readings, investigations of masculinity, queer theory, and intersectional approaches. The contributors interpret literary or musical works by Chrétien de Troyes, Aimeric de Peguilhan, Hue de la Ferté, the Chastelain de Couci, Jacques de Vitry, Christine de Pizan, Anne de Graville, Alain Chartier, and Giovanni Boccaccio, among others. Gender and Voice in Medieval French Literature and Song offers a valuable interdisciplinary approach and contributes to the history of women’s voices in the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. It illuminates the critical role of voice in negotiating culture, celebrating and innovating traditions, advancing personal and political projects, and defining the literary and musical developments that shaped medieval France. Contributors: Lisa Colton | Emily J Hutchinson | Daisy Delogu | Tamara Bentley Caudill | Katherine Kong | Meghan Quinlan | Lydia M Walker | Rachel May Golden | Anna Kathryn Grau | Anne Adele Levitsky

Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. It demands the highest standards of scholarship from its contributors, all of whom are leading academics in their fields. It gives preference to studies pursuing interdisciplinary approaches and to those developing novel methodological ideas. The scope is exceptionally broad and includes manuscript studies, textual criticism, iconography, studies of the relationship between words and music and the relationship between music and society. Articles in volume ten include: Machaut's motet 15 and the Roman de la Rose: the literary context of Amours qui a le pouoir/Faus Samblant m' a deceii/Vidi Dominum; Giulo de' Medici's music books; Parisian nobles, a Scottish princess and the woman's voice in late medieval song.

Ferranate (English and comparative literature, Columbia U.) describes medieval women's activities as correspondents, readers, writers, and literary patrons from antiquity through the 14th century. The writings she considers range through virtually every field in historical and literary studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book is a reference volume and a digest of more than a century of scholarly work on troubadour poetry. Written by leading scholars, it summarizes the current consensus on the various facets of troubadour studies. Standing at the beginning of the history of modern European verse, the troubadours were the prime poets and composers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the South of France. No study of medieval literature is complete without an examination of the courtly love which is celebrated in the elaborately rhymed stanzas of troubadour verse, creations whose words and melodies were imitated by poets and musicians all over medieval Europe. The words of about 2,500 troubadour songs have survived, along with 250 melodies, and all have come under intense scholarly scrutiny. This Handbook brings together the fruits of this scrutiny, giving teachers and students an overview of the fundamental issues in troubadour scholarship. All quotations are given in the original Old Occitan and in English. The editors provide a list of troubadour editions and an index, and each chapter includes a list of additional readings. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996. This book is a reference volume and a digest of more than a century of scholarly work on troubadour poetry. Written by leading scholars, it summarizes the current consensus on the various facets of troubadour studies. Standing at the beginning

This volume assembles a wide range of scholars and critical methodologies to suggest multiple interpretations of the vital connection linking literary imagination and the human experience of reality. In varying ways and with varying intent, it speaks to the essential experience of participating in imaginative worlds, offering different accounts of how language signifies in real and imaginary contexts, and why people read and write rival realities. Taking as point of departure Aristotle's definition of poesis, it questions how literature stands in both mimetic and transformative relation to the givens of history, reworking them within the order of imagination and desire. Through historical, linguistic, and literary analysis of texts spanning nine centuries, it demonstrates how though it is irreducible to reality, literary imagination conveys something very real about the human response to the world, including the knowledge and power proper to such experience; neither history nor lie, it discloses a reality purged of extraneous detail, making what is essential to human experience more concentrated and dramatic. Thus made apparent is that literature and history do not exclude each other, but inform, correct, and supplement each other, underscoring the complexities of thought and imagination.