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Book Review
May. 12th, 2025 01:03 pmMusic, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer
by Bruce Holsinger
This fascinating and intellectually intricate (in a good way) book covers the embodiment of music in the middle ages: the way music was conceived of emanating from bodies and affecting those bodies. Holsinger draws on a wide range of sources: early church writings, the mystical revelations of Hildegard von Bingen and other medieval nuns, translations re-writings of Ovidian myths, and the literature of Chaucer and others. He weaves a web of interconnection among them, tracing various threads through time, geography, and cultural milieu. It's deft and compelling and paints a vivid and dynamic picture of medieval musical culture that was fairly eye-opening. I especially loved his investigation of the music body as a site for the expression of deviance, sexual or otherwise.
by Bruce Holsinger
This fascinating and intellectually intricate (in a good way) book covers the embodiment of music in the middle ages: the way music was conceived of emanating from bodies and affecting those bodies. Holsinger draws on a wide range of sources: early church writings, the mystical revelations of Hildegard von Bingen and other medieval nuns, translations re-writings of Ovidian myths, and the literature of Chaucer and others. He weaves a web of interconnection among them, tracing various threads through time, geography, and cultural milieu. It's deft and compelling and paints a vivid and dynamic picture of medieval musical culture that was fairly eye-opening. I especially loved his investigation of the music body as a site for the expression of deviance, sexual or otherwise.
