Title: Melodye and Noyse: An Aesthetic of Musica in The Knight’s Tale and The Miller’s Tale
Abstract:This article argues that in the first two Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer employs music as a literary aesthetic for the sake of structural and narrative development. The music theory, forms, images,...This article argues that in the first two Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer employs music as a literary aesthetic for the sake of structural and narrative development. The music theory, forms, images, and performance practices in The Knight’s Tale and The Miller’s Tale constitute a literary aesthetic of musica that extends far beyond the more common and limited idea of music as simply song or sounded melody or harmony. In medieval texts on music theory, written almost exclusively in Latin, the term musica refers to performance as well as to theory, philosophy, and principles—all features that function in sounded music as well as in other artistic forms, such as literature. This is not to imply that a given literary passage necessarily mentions singing or musical instruments or would have originally been sung or set to musical accompaniment. Instead, an aesthetic of musica constitutes a literary use of music to shape a text’s structure and guide its interpretation, even in the absence of notated or sounded music. This aesthetic function of music contributes to the structural and narrative elements of the discursive interaction between The Knight’s Tale and The Miller’s Tale, which have often been compared, but not yet in terms of their music.Read More
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 1
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot