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Embodied Voices Leslie C. Dunn (Vassar College, New York)

Embodied Voices By Leslie C. Dunn (Vassar College, New York)

Summary

Embodied Voices explores cultural manifestations of female vocality in the light of theories of subjectivity, the body, and sexual difference and through a wide spectrum of discourses, including literature, music and film.

Embodied Voices Summary

Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture by Leslie C. Dunn (Vassar College, New York)

As a material link between body and culture, self and other, the voice has been endlessly fascinating to artists and critics. Yet it is the voices of women that have inspired the greatest fascination, as well as the deepest ambivalence, because the female voice signifies sexual otherness as well as sexual and cultural power. Embodied Voices explores cultural manifestations of female vocality in the light of current theories of subjectivity, the body and sexual difference. The fourteen essays collected here examine a wide spectrum of discourses, including myth, literature, music, film, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Though diverse in their critical approaches, the essays are united in their attempt to articulate the compelling yet problematic intersections of gender, voice, and embodiment as they have shaped the textual representation of women and women's self-expression in performance.

Embodied Voices Reviews

'... a stimulating book which keeps its focus true despite the almost perverse range of subject matter ... [a] dizzying intellectual switchback.' The Musical Times
'... this book makes a bold step in addressing, not least, the future of musicological discourse; namely, whether and how to (dis)locate the boundaries between the musical and the 'extra-musical'. Thus, it should excite anyone interested in the fundamental issue of the meaning of music in our culture.' Brio

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. Vocality, Textuality, and the Silencing of the Female Voice: 1. The Gorgon and the nightingale: the voice of female lament and Pindar's Twelfth Pythian Ode; 2. Music and the maternal voice in Purgatorio XIX; 3. Ophelia's songs in Hamlet: music, madness and the feminine; 4. Wordsworth and Romantic voice: the poet's song and the prostitute's cry; Part II. Anxieties of Audition: 5. 'No women are indeed': the boy actor as vocal seductress in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century drama; 6. Deriding the voice of Jeanette MacDonald: notes on psychoanalysis and the American film musical; 7. Adorno and the Sirens: tele-phono-graphic bodies; Part III. Women Artists: Vocality and Cultural Authority: 8. The diva doesn't die: George Eliot's Armgart; 9. Rewriting Ophelia: fluidity, madness, and the voice in Louise Colet's La Servante; 10. Staring the camera down: direct address and women's voices; 11. The voice of lament: female vocality and performative efficacy in the Finnish-Karelian itkuvirsi; Part IV. Maternal Voices: 12. The lyrical dimensions of spirituality: music, voice, and language in the novels of Toni Morrison; 13. Red hot mamas: Bessie Smith, Sophie Tucker, and the ethnic maternal voice in American popular song; 14. Maternalism and the material girl Nancy J. Vickers.

Additional information

GOR004700860
9780521585835
052158583X
Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture by Leslie C. Dunn (Vassar College, New York)
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Cambridge University Press
1996-12-05
276
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Embodied Voices