The Theory of Passionate Song

Published: Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan, eds. Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011), pp. 231-51.

Description: Chaucer, Lydgate, and Henryson recognized a song's ability to excite and articulate passionate feeling and they invoke the idea of song in their works in ways that call attention "to the formal qualities of song itself." Zeeman inquires into "the models and theories" of passionate song, examines the theoretical traditions commenting on medieval songs, and documents "rhetorico-expressive theories of music" and theories found in scriptural exegesis on the "affectivity in biblical song." Mentions characters who sing songs or songs appearing in BD, TC, MilT, MerT, Mars, PrT.

Alternative Title: Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann.

Chaucer Subjects: Background and General Criticism; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations