The Tooth that Nibbles at the Soul brings together Marshall Brown's
new and previously published writings on literature and music.
These essays engage questions that are central to the development
of literature, music, and the arts in the period from Romanticism
at the end of the eighteenth century to the avant-garde movements
of the early twentieth, a period in which the modern evolution of
the arts is coupled with a rise in the significance of music as
artistic form.--With a special focus on lyric poetry and canonical
composers including Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert,
Brown ties the growing prominence of music in this period to the
modernist principle of abstraction. Music, as Brown provocatively
notes, conveys meaning without explicitly saying anything. This
principle of abstraction could be taken as the overriding formula
for modernist art in general; and it explains why in this period
music becomes the model to which all the other arts, in particular
painting and literature, aspire.--Brown's title, taken from a poem
by Emily Dickinson, reminds us that abstraction -- musical and
artistic - is anything but toothless; indeed, it "nibbles at the
soul" in subtle and enduring ways. Throughout his wide-ranging and
erudite analysis, Brown's goal is to pinpoint the nature of music's
bite and to illuminate the shared elements of literature and
music.--While there are many previous comparisons of music and
poetry, few are systematic or based on a solid knowledge of both
literary criticism and musicology. Brown's essays can be enjoyed by
a general, well-read public not trained in either music or
eighteenth-century literature, as well as by an audience steeped in
sophisticated (if not technical) musical analysis.--Marshall Brown
is professor of comparative literature at the University of
Washington. He is the editor of Modern Language Quarterly and
coeditor, with Susan Wolfson, of Reading for Form. He is a
translator, with Jane K. Brown, of Harald Weinrich's The
Linguistics of Lying and Other Essays.--"Marshall Brown is simply
one of the finest literary critics we have and one of the very few
who are equally at home with literature and music. He is a classic
example of the erudite scholar who wears his learning lightly; he
writes with wit and verve; no one does close reading better; and he
has the gift of constantly being able to surprise as well as to
inform and stimulate. All serious students of literature and the
arts will want to read this book, which they will find themselves
not simply absorbing, but using." -Lawrence Kramer, author of Why
Classical Music Still Matters
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