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.

Pauline A. LeVen (Author)

9781107148741, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 December 2020

228 pages
16 x 23.5 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'This book is much more than a well-documented and innovative insight into Greek and Latin traditional narratives of music and metamorphosis in Roman Imperial age. It is the first 'posthumanist' comprehensive review into the deep meanings of musicking between human and non-human animals, the smartest invitation to find new ways of thinking of sound and music in Antiquity, beyond anthropocentrism. A perspective we just can't miss, today!' Donatella Restani, Univesity of Bologna

Where does music come from? What kind of agency does a song have? What is at the root of musical pleasure? Can music die? These are some of the questions the Greeks and the Romans asked about music, song, and the soundscape within which they lived, and that this book examines. Focusing on mythical narratives of metamorphosis, it investigates the aesthetic and ontological questions raised by fantastic stories of musical origins. Each chapter opens with an ancient text devoted to a musical metamorphosis (of a girl into a bird, a nymph into an echo, men into cicadas, etc.) and reads that text as a meditation on an aesthetic and ontological question, in dialogue with 'contemporary' debates – contemporary with debates in the Greco-Roman culture that gave rise to the story, and with modern debates in the posthumanities about what it means to be a human animal enmeshed in a musicking environment.

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.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D], Music reviews & criticism [AVC], Music [AV], The arts [A]