Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer

Author / Editor
Holsinger, Bruce W.

Title
Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer

Published
Stanfords : Stanford University Press, 2001.

Physical Description
xxiv, 472 pp.

Description
In a wide-ranging study of the corporeality of medieval musical culture, Holsinger assesses the "polyphonic perversity" of Chaucer's Pardoner, i.e., the performances that highlight the Pardoner's rhetorical adeptness and distinguish his musical body from that of those around him. Holsinger also discusses the particularly gruesome way in which musical pedagogy and bodily violence meet in PrT, even while Chaucer seeks to efface all suggestion that the clergeon's musical education involved bodily violence.

Chaucer Subjects
Pardoner and His Tale.
Prioress and Her Tale.