Overview

In his Essay of 1815, Wordsworth asserts that ‘a pure and refined scheme of harmony’ must prevail in all ‘higher poetry’. This idea of a structured and complex form of ‘harmony’ was similarly noted earlier in The Prelude (1805), where Wordsworth famously claimed that the human mind is ‘framed even like the breath / And harmony of music’. Musical Wordsworth presents an original understanding of Wordsworthian harmony by examining an organised but dynamic sense of musicality that shapes his poetic theory and practice. This book is the first study to draw on music psychology and aesthetics to interpret the function and mechanism of Wordsworth’s aural structure and movement. Engaging with scholarship from the fields of literature and music, it defines Wordsworth’s poetry and the imagination through musical conceptions, and establishes various modes and forms of poetic listening as experiences of musical performance and appreciation. Each chapter explores a pair of musical abstractions – Lyricism and Musicality; Breath and Harmony; Repetition and Resonance; Expectation and Surprise; Rhythm and Dynamics; Rest and Silence. Musical Wordsworth will be of interest to students and researchers of Romantic poetry, long nineteenth-century literature, and music.

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9781802078312

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Reviews

'Musical Wordsworth: Romantic Soundscape and Harmony makes a consistently interesting and valuable contribution to the field, not least in its blend of disciplinary technique and the thoroughness and depth of its inquiry. Lo has tackled the challenges involved in articulating both the character and the significance of auricular effect in poetry admirably, which gives the book special interest both within and beyond its focus on Wordsworth.' - Gregory Leadbetter, Birmingham City University

Author Information

Yimon Lo is Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tübingen and Research Fellow at the University of Leuven.

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