The Enlightenment saw a critical engagement with the ancient idea that music carries certain powers - it heals and pacifies, civilizes and educates. Yet this interest in musical utility seems to conflict with larger notions of aesthetic autonomy that emerged at the same time. In Enlightenment Orpheus, Vanessa Agnew examines this apparent conflict, and provocatively questions the notion of an aesthetic-philosophical break between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.   Agnew persuasively connects the English traveler and music scholar Charles Burney with the ancient myth of Orpheus. She uses Burney as a guide through wide-ranging discussions of eighteenth-century musical travel, views on music's curative powers, interest in non-European music, and concerns about cultural identity. Arguing that what people said about music was central to some of the great Enlightenment debates surrounding such issues as human agency, cultural difference, and national identity, Agnew adds a new dimension to postcolonial studies, which has typically emphasized the literary and visual at the expense of the aural. She also demonstrates that these discussions must be viewed in context at the era's broad and well-entrenched transnational network, and emphasizes the importance of travel literature in generating knowledge at the time.   A new and radically interdisciplinary approach to the question of the power of music - its aesthetic and historical interpretations and political uses - Enlightenment Orpheus will appeal to students and scholars in historical musicology, ethnomusicology, German studies, eighteenth-century history, and comparative studies.

Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds (New Cultural History of Music)

Arts & Photography

Agnew, Vanessa

Music

Oxford University Press

<p>When adults read fairy tales, they are generally not just interested in what happens to the characters: they also reflect on the deeper meaning and the "moral" of the story. This compact volume includes the text of Grimms' lesser-known "Mermaid in the Pond", followed by Verena Kast's interpretation of the tale. For those of us stuck in day-to-day routines, Kast shows how to take a reading of our own "passion barometer" by making this story of love, betrayal, death, transformation and renewal our own. Through exploration of our deepest emotions regarding interpersonal relationships - in story, symbol and myth - we can finally overcome our insecurities and fears to acknowledge, and then communicate, what really turns us on.</p>

The Mermaid in the Pond: An Erotic Fairy Tale for Adults

Literature & Fiction

Kast, Verena

Erotica

Continuum Intl Pub Group

<p>The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies provides the first overview of significant concepts within reenactment studies. The volume includes a co-authored critical introduction and a comprehensive compilation of key term entries contributed by leading reenactment scholars from Europe, North America, and Australia. Well into the future, this wide-ranging reference work will inform and shape the thinking of researchers, teachers, and students of history and heritage and memory studies, as well as cultural studies, film, theater and performance studies, dance, art history, museum studies, literary criticism, musicology, and anthropology.</p>

The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies: Key Terms in the Field (Routledge Handbooks)

History

Lamb, Jonathan

Tomann, Juliane

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Routledge

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Books by Agnew, Vanessa