Secular Lyrics Research Articles

Краіна мі-мінор. Ранняя лірыка Алега Бембеля (Зніча)

The article analyzes the early philosophical and intimate lyrics of Oleg Bembel, which until now have not been the subject of research by literary critics. Oleg Bembel is known as a dissident philosopher, and author of the book Native Language and Moral and Aesthetic Progress (Родная мова і маральна-эстэтычны прагрэс, London, 1985), and also as a poet-monk, author of religious-patriotic and religious-prayer poems under the pseudonym Znich. The early secular lyrics of Oleg Bembel, published in the collective poetry collection Wing (Крыло, Minsk, 1984), are considered in the article: 1) as an important element in reproducing the creative evolution of the famous poet; 2) as an example of the intellectual and philosophical trend in the Belarusian poetry of the 80s. 20th century; 3) as valuable material for studying the relationship between censorship and artistic creation in Soviet Belarus and totalitarian society as a whole. It is difficult to compare the early philosophical and intimate lyrics of Oleg Bembel (Znich) with his dissident and religious poems in “samizdat” and emigration publications, but it can also be considered a manifestation of nonconformism.

John Michael, Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson

John Michael, Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson Fordham University Press, 2018. Pp. 256. ISBN-13: 9780823279715 Lizzy Pournara John Michael’s book entitled Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson (2018) constitutes an important addition to the scholarship that keeps on being steadily produced about Edgar Alan Poe’s, Walt Whitman’s and Emily Dickinson’s poetic practice. The uniqueness of Michael’s publication lies in...

Kam, Jožek, putuješ (Where are you going, Jožek) Modest Contribution to the Study of Old Kajkavian Secular Lyric

The paper brings forth several observations about two secular Kajkavian songbooks written by the same hand. They are Pjesmarica Nikole Šafrana (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Archives, sg. I a 98) and Canticum cytharaedorum cytarizantium cum cytaris suis (National and University Library in Zagreb, sg. R 3631). Even though the songbooks are quite extensive, so far they have not been thoroughly analysed nor written about as a whole; rather, scholarly attention was directed to individual songs, mostly those that were repeated in several manuscripts. Some songs were written about in the attempt to ascertain or confirm their author, some because they revolve around a historical event (e.g. the Zrinski-Frankopan Conspiracy), while some served as a template for stylistic analysis. Unlike such approach, in which the songbooks are always understood as a mere, almost accidental collection of randomly gathered compositions, this paper emphasizes that songbooks should be studied as unique, ordered wholes. Their compiler was obviously guided by the desire to offer a rounded collection. The hypothesis that the compiler was a person who continuously and seriously engaged in Kajkavian lyric before the National Revival can be further testified to by several manuscripts from the State Archives written by the same hand.

The 2019 William B. Hunter Lecture of the scrc: Paleness versus Eloquence: The Ideologies of Style in the English Renaissance

This essay considers the contrast between plainness and eloquence in some canonical English (secular) lyrics and plays from Wyatt through Shakespeare. Its claim is that in the relevant body of work, and in the culture as a whole, each of the styles bore a specifiable ideological charge. It shows that English secular poetry and drama in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century was profoundly aware of the ideologies associated with the two levels or kinds of style, and profoundly divided in its commitments. In lyric poetry, this is true in Wyatt at the beginning of the sixteenth century and of Sidney at the end. In drama, Shakespeare is profoundly aware both of the styles and of the ideologies with which they are associated. He uses and also critiques both of these in the poems and the plays. Othello is the culmination of both the use and the critique.

Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson

Secular Lyric: The Modernization of the Poem in Poe, Whitman, and Dickinson

Conservare criticamente è, tanto quanto innovare, un’ipotesi. La edición de textos de tradición única (desde la perspectiva gallego-portuguesa)

En este trabajo se repasan las aportaciones teóricas realizadas por la crítica en lo que atañe a la edición de textos enviados por un único manuscrito y se afrontan las dificultades que en la práctica encuentra el filólogo que trabaja con tales documentos. Los problemas y soluciones posibles (conservación vs. corrección, grafía) se ejemplifican con textos de diferente naturaleza y procedencia, prestando particular atención a la lírica profana gallega y portuguesa de la Edad Media.

Handbook of Medieval Sexuality ed. by Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER in the late twentieth century for language that undoes itself, that drives a wedge between signifier and signified, is ultimately Pseudo-Dionysian in origin. A claim this audacious would require a detailed examination ofthe historical development ofour aesthetic ideals that may be beyond the scope ofthis investigation, but it strikes me as at least plausible that the repressed that returns in late twentieth-century appreciations of texts like The Canterbury Tales is the religious origin ofour own aesthetic canon. LAURIE FINKE Kenyon College VERN L. BuLLOUGH and JAMES A. BRUNDAGE, eds. Handbook of MedievalSexuality. Garland Reference Library ofthe Humanities, vol. 1696. New York and London: Garland, 1996. Pp. vi, 441. $68.00. This useful ifuneven volume "aims to address the needs ofstudents (and even faculty members) who are interested in the study ofmedieval sex­ uality and who would like a guide to the sources and literature bearing on medieval sex" (p. xv). Handbook ofMedieval Sexuality comprises, in addition to the editors' introductory history of the study (and neglect) of medieval sexuality, eighteen chapters divided into three sections: "Sexual Norms" features chapters on confessionals, canon law, Western medicine and natural philosophy, gendered sexuality, chaste marriage, and male sexuality; "Variance from Norms," on homosexuality, lesbians, cross-dressing, prostitution, contraception and early abortion, and cas­ tration and eunuchism; and "Cultural Issues," on sexuality in religion (Jewish, Muslim, and Eastern Orthodox) and literature (French, Old Norse, and English). This handbook will certainly guide students toward many fruitful areas of research. While the editors disavow any claim to comprehen­ siveness, the amount of information and quality of research made read­ ily available here testify to the vitality of the growing fields that con­ stitute "medieval sexual studies." Jacqueline Murray's chapter on lesbians exemplifies the strengths ofthe interdisciplinary and theoreti­ cal approaches that distinguish many of the chapters: it takes the marginalization of lesbians in both medieval culture and modern 230 REVIEWS scholarship as the catalyst for an invigorating survey of how we can learn about medieval lesbians from canon law, the penitentials, medical writings, court records, poetry and letters, and art and music.Equally ambitious is Laurie Finke's chapter on French literature, which uses the critical debates about "courtly love" and the fabliaux to categorize the major theoretical approaches to literature's status as representation of sexuality: the "reflective," which sees these genres as reflections of a prior reality; the "hermeneutic," practiced by both exegetical and New Critical readers, which seeks a "hidden reality" behind the text's osten­ sible meaning; the "specular," which focuses on the sublimation of sex­ uality into textuality; and the "dialogic" notion that literary texts "re­ flect, but also in turn shape, those social conditions [of their creation} in a process that is, finally, dialogic" (p.353). Not all the entries, however, are as rigorous and sophisticated as these.Chaucerians in particular will be disappointed by David Lampe's chapter "Sex Roles and the Role of Sex in Medieval English Literature," which quotes the Wife of Bath, for example, at length, but gives no no­ tice whatsoever to the crucial recent work on gender and literature by Carolyn Dinshaw and many others.Lampe instead points out that class and age are the determining factors in Chaucer's portrayals of sexual athletes, concluding by affirming "the truism that 'age and youth are often at debate' and also that aristocratic status ...can also be a source of restraint (noblesse oblige) because of the importance of paternal blood­ lines for the inheritance of property and title" (p.413).Of the rest of the Middle English corpus, Lampe surveys obvious passages from The Owl and the Nightingale, the secular lyrics, Dunbar, the romances, the Gawain-poet, Malory, Gower, Langland, and drama-a reasonable se­ lection, to be sure, yet one might question the decision to expend half a page on Harrison Birtwistle's 1991 opera Gawain (p. 416) while ignoring the erotic mystical writings ofJulian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Finally, this chapter is full of such awkward sentences as "If aristocratic Emilye desires not to marry, ...she is told that because of her social station she cannot maintain that role, but must marry" (p. 413...

‘I cried power’: The (Im)Possibility of Female ‘Freedom’ in Le Jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter (Darina Al-Joundi)

Le Jour où Nina Simone a cessé de chanter narrates Darina Al-Joundi's experiences of the Lebanese civil war, and a restriction that is personal, social, gendered and religious. It represents a resistance through performance, via appropriation of a combative persona and of secular lyrics by Nina Simone which Al-Joundi uses to ‘cry power’ by collapsing boundaries between self and other, East and West, thought and experience. This article analyses the tension between imposed restrictions and a desired ‘freedom’, setting established theories of exile (Said) in dialogue with more specific discussions of Lebanon and its social restriction of women. This interrogates the ways in which a putative ‘freedom’ is constructed or diagnosed as ‘madness’, concluding that the only possibility for negotiating any measure of real ‘freedom’ is in crossing borders and developing a new model of female ‘freedom’ contingent on the fragile and ever-shifting boundaries between representations of East and West.

Music Sacred and Profane: Exploring the Use of Popular Music in Evangelical Worship Services

This paper focuses on the use of what I call popular-secular music in contemporary American evangelical church worship services. I explore why some of these American churches are using mainstream music in their worship service that is not identified with Christian religious culture and/or has no overt religious references. Evangelical congregations often employ popular-secular music to find and proclaim their identity as Christian communities. Given the role of music in identifying social location and preserving identity, it is curious that some congregations opt to adopt popular music and secular lyrics. The following research and interviews show that the ways in which the evangelical congregations are using music demonstrates their particular understandings of the line between the sacred world and the secular world—as well as how they negotiate the boundary between sacred and secular music.

'AS DEWE IN APRYLLE': 'I SYNG OF A MAYDEN' AND THE LITURGY

I syng of a mayden that is makeles, Kyng of alle kynges to here sone the ches. He cam also stylle ther his moder was As dewe in Aprylle that fallyt on the gras. He cam also stylle to his moderes bowr As dew in Aprille that fallyt on the flour. He cam also style ther his moder lay As dew in Aprille that fallyt on the spray. Moder and maydyn was never non but che -- Wel may swych a lady Godes moder be! 'I syng of a mayden' is one of the most widely read and most frequently commented on of the shorter Middle English poems. Derek Pearsall's remarks distil much of the scholarly discussion: A brain and a subtle ear has gone into the making of this poem ... celebrating the mystery of Christ's conception. Dew falling on grass, flower and spray (traditional imagery, deriving from OT texts such as Ps. 72:6) suggests case, grace and delicacy generally (not progressive stages of insemination). The emphasis on Mary's freedom of choice, at the moment of the Annunciation, is theologically strictly proper.1 In this essay I will concentrate on one of those images of `ease, grace, and delicacy', `dewe in Aprylle', and especially on its liturgical associations. My aim in doing so is not simply to give a clearer sense of the probable source of the image but, more importantly, to sketch a context within which the considerable artistry of this poem and the richness and complexity of its religious background may be more fully appreciated. It has been previously assumed that the poem's springtime imagery is for the most part derived from secular lyrics, especially secular love poetry, with the exception of the `dewe in Aprylle' which is related to an image in the Advent liturgy, celebrated, of course, in December, not in April.2 The liturgical text in question is from the Book of Isaiah xlv.8, rendered in the Douai Bible as `Drop down dew, ve heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a saviour.'3 In the Saturn breviary's version of the Vulgate, the verse is rorate caeli desuper et nubes pluant justum:aperiatur terra et germinet Salvatorem'. Consideration of this passage does indeed enrich understanding of the dew image in 'I syng of a mayden'. In a number of medieval rites, however, `rotate caeli ...' not only occurs in the liturgy for Advent, as is still common, but in the liturgy for the Feast of the Annunciation as well.4 That the late-medieval English liturgical uses of York and Hereford, as well as the more widely known Sarum rite, used `rorate celi' for the Annunciation confirms its importance in understanding the dew image in 'I syng of a mayden', and, moreover, shows that the poem's natural imagery and religious context are much better integrated than had been realized. 'I syng of a mayden' is a very quiet and very beautiful meditation on the inward aspects of the Annunciation, on the immediate consequences of Mary's acceptance of Gabriel's message. (It may be of interest that in the manuscript this poem is immediately preceded by another that follows the biblical account of the Annunciation more literally, while the poem that comes after it, `Adam lay ibowndyn',5 reminds us of the need for the Incarnation and consequent Redemption, of the great benefit to humankind gained in the moment described in 'I syng of a mayden'.) There is a contrast in the poem between the deliberate choice of Mary to become the mother of Jesus and the inevitability implied by the natural imagery used to describe the working out of that choice. The natural images give a sense that what is happening is akin to the recurring processes of the renewal of nature, the formation of dew and the growth and blossoming of plants. On the one hand there is a 'mayden' exercising her free choice, and on the other there is a tremendous cosmic and metaphysical process with which she chooses to co-operate. Tact and delicacy, created at least in part by the natural images, predominate in this presentation of conception. …

Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet. The Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony

The motet began as a form of sacred vocal music in several parts; a cantus firmus or tenor, drawn from sacred Latin chant, served as a foundation for one or more upper voices. The French motet was a well-established form by the middle of the thirteenth century, as were bilingual motets that combined at least one French and one Latin text among the upper voices. Though some attention is paid to melodic structure and the relationship between text and music, this book focuses on the literary artistry of the texts of French and bilingual motets, notably the special feature of motets that distinguished them from other medieval lyric forms: the phenomenon of polytextuality. The author analyzes both the interaction of the texts within a motet (when there is more than one texted voice) and the relationship between the texted voice(s) and the tenor. Although some French motets employ vernacular refrains as tenors, the vast majority use Latin tenors, thus maintaining an explicit tie to the liturgical origins of the genre. This presence of sacred and profane elements within a single motet presents an interpretive dilemma that the author suggests can be resolved through an allegorical or parodic reading; indeed, she argues that the tension between allegory and parody is an essential feature of the French motet. The book examines the creative juxtaposition of sacred tenors and vernacular lyric motifs, and the resulting interplay of allegorical and parodic meanings, focusing in particular on the female persona as object of desire and as desiring subject, and on the motives of the separation and reunion of lovers. The author's analysis also discusses the links between the French motet and the secular lyric, the allegorization of love poetry in sermons and mystical texts, sacred parody, and the playful use of liturgical and biblical citations in erotic poetry.

Joseph Szövérffy. Secular Latin Lyrics and Minor Poetic Forms of the Middle Ages: A Historical Survey and Literary Repertory from the Tenth to the Late Fifteenth Century

Joseph Szövérffy. Secular Latin Lyrics and Minor Poetic Forms of the Middle Ages: A Historical Survey and Literary Repertory from the Tenth to the Late Fifteenth Century

The Origin of Brahms's in Stiller Nacht

Johannes Brahms's two interpretations of the enigmatic In stiller Nacht are among his best known and most beloved folk-song settings, a reputation justly deserved, for in each a poem is united with music of equal simplicity and poignancy. In the choral rendition, which opens the second volume of the Deutsche Volkslieder for mixed a cappella choir (1864; WoO 34 no. 8; see ex. 1), a rhythmically straightforward homophonic texture is softly colored with neighbor-tone dissonances to reinforce the expressive undulation of the melody and delicately orchestrated by reducing the voices to three treble parts or amplifying them with divisi alto or bass. The distinctive feature of the setting for solo voice, which was published thirty years later, in 1894, and occupies a place of honor as the last of the arrangements for solo voice in the forty-nine Deutsche Volkslieder (WoO 33 no. 42; see ex. 2), is the metrical displacement of the accompaniment: for much of the the widely spaced piano part enters an eighth note in advance of the voice, creating a mood of hushed disquiet, which, over the course of the stanza, is intensified by a rise in dynamic level to forte. Metrically stable passages provide resolution within and at the end of each stanza.(1) In the poem a lament, carried gently on the wind, is heard early in the night (ex. 3); it melts the heart with its bitter pain and sorrow, and tears flow from the eyes of the listener. All nature is moved, and the moon ceases to shine, the stars stop their gleaming, the birds no longer sing joyously, and the wild beasts grieve as well. The responsiveness of nature to human suffering harkens back to the poetry of the Minnesingers, and this haunting, touching plaint of a heart stricken to death(2) has been viewed as a secular lyric. But study of the provenance of this lovely folk song reveals that the lament issues from no ordinary mortal: the quiet night is the scene of Christ's suffering on the Mount of Olives.(3) Just when and how Brahms came to know In stiller Nacht has long been a mystery. When queried by his friend and future biographer Max Kalbeck in 1894, Brahms was characteristically evasive: that the would not be found among his books is all he would say.(4) Gustav Ophuls, who compiled an anthology of Brahms's texts in 1898,(5) found a seventeenth-century sacred poem by the Jesuit poet Friedrich von Spee that opens with two lines similar to the initial verses of In stiller Nacht - Bei stiller Nacht, zur ersten Wacht / Ein Stimm sich gund zu Klagen (In the quiet night, at the first watch, / a voice utters its cry) - and closes with two quatrains (out of fifteen) that match Brahms's second stanza. The poem, which is entitled Trawer-Gesang von der Noth Christi am Oelberg in dem Garten (Mourning-Song of the Suffering of Christ on the Mount of Olives in the Garden), first appeared in the Seraphische Lustgarten, published in Cologne in 1635, and was included in Spee's Trutz Nachtigal of 1649. (Max Friedlaender gives the first three stanzas of Spee's poem in his book Brahms Lieder.(6)) [Musical Expression Omitted] [Musical Expression Omitted] The tune provided with this poem, though, was not the one subsequently used by Brahms, and Kalbeck initially concluded that Brahms had composed the melody himself. In 1915, in an appendix to the second edition of the fourth volume of his Brahms biography, Kalbeck reopened the issue.(7) It had been brought to his attention that the four-bar melody of a Miserere mei Deus (Psalm 51) published in Paderborn in 1863 bore a strong resemblance to the initial eight bars of In stiller Nacht (see ex. 4a). Moreover, a sacred about Christ's suffering on the Mount of Olives - Bei finstrer Nacht zur ersten Wacht / ertont ein banges Klagen (In the dark of night, at the first watch, / an anxious lament rang out) - had appeared in Albert Gereon Stein's Kolnisches Gesangbuch: Sammlung katholischer Kirchenlieder mit Melodien of 1852 with a similar eight-bar melody (ex. …

Foreward

Foreward The following essays pay tribute to Vaughan's continuing value as a poet. That they should appear in a special issue of the George Herbert Journal is, of course, entirely appropriate given the Welsh poet's conscious action of affiliating with the author of The Temple, but in soliciting contributions I have not sought to make this fact a guiding principle of selection. Indeed, the main feature uniting these studies is simply the fruitful attempt made by individual authors to follow their own scholarly instincts and to say something new about Vaughan. As a result, significant phases of the poet's career go unmarked. There is virtually no discussion of the early secular lyrics, and familiar issues like Vaughan's hermeticism, his importance asa "nature" poet, and even the rich particularities of his relationship with Herbert receive little or no attention. The essays speak instead to a variety of other concerns. It is not the least of the virtues of the studies by Cedric Brown and Mary Jane Doherty that we now have, respectively, the most informed readings to date of "Daphnis: An Elegaic Eclogue" and Floros Solitudinis, two works that reflect considerable literary ambition on Vaughan's part but are often ignored or relegated to footnotes in modern critical discussions of the poet. Partly out of a desire to see the canon of Vaughan's writings extended, I have placed these essays at the beginning, but both also strike notes that resonate into the collection. Professor Brown's inclusion of Vaughan among seventeenthcentury poets "who are most aware of history" anticipates the separate discussions by Janet Halley and Boyd Berry involving politics and the self in Silex Scintillans. Professor Doherty's elevation of the Vita Paulina to a central place in Vaughan's religious development foreshadows a similar concern by Professor Halley, however differently each treats the problem of authority. If these four scholars interpret Vaughan's response to history in different ways — prophetic, liturgical, ironic, and psychological — they nonetheless agree in viewing Vaughan as intensely involved in problems of reconciling private attitudes with public action. The remaining three shorter studies address specifically literary issues. Susanne Woods places Vaughan's versification succinctly and provocatively within a broad seventeenth-century dynamic. Jeff Johnson argues for a new imagistic order unifying "The Night." And Richard Kennedy has deepened our knowledge of Vaughan's sustained interest in Owen Felltham. As the essays collected here amply illustrate, Vaughan is no longer read only for his visions of paradise and light, but his elegant distillation of Felltham's "Of the worship of Admiration" in "They are all gone into the world of light" reminds us that it is partly because of his exceptional response to mediated wonder that both the general and specialized reader can still discover pleasure in his poetry. Jonathan F.S. Post University of California — Los Angeles ...

Middle English Lyrics: Authoritative Texts, Critical and Historical Backgrounds, Perspectives on Six Poems

It is the only anthology which includes all thirty-one English lyrics from MS Harley 2253, all the verses by Friar Herebert printed in Brown XIV, and all the important poems given in Robbins' Secular Lyrics. In all there are 245 lyrics, arranged thematically. To make these delightful poems accessible to the modern reader, the editors have removed many of the orthographic impediments inherent in Middle English verse and have modernized punctuation, capitalization, and obsolete letters while scrupulously seeking to retain the substantive integrity of the poems. Critical and Historical Backgrounds are provided in essays by Peter Dronke, Stephen Manning, Raymond Oliver, and Rosemary Woolf. In a special section, six poems are singled out for critical comment by A. K. Moore, Edmund Reiss, D. W. Robertson, Jr., E. T. Donaldson, John Speirs, Thomas Jemielity, D. G. Halliburton, Leo Spitzer, and others. Two of these lyrics, Maiden in the mor lay and I sing of a maiden, are discussed by four different scholars. In all, twenty-five poems are discussed in the essays. The volume also includes a list of Abbreviations, a Table of Textual Sources and Dates, a Select Bibliography, and an Index of First Lines.

The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse

This book presents 290 representative selections of religious and secular Latin poetry from the period A.D. 300-1300. It includes not only famous hymns and sequences, but also selections from epic poetry and a large number of secular lyrics from various manuscript collections.

Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries

Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries

The Secular Lyric in Middle English.

The scholar of this work has attempted to frame a comprehensive view of medieval secular lyrics, an attempt which includes discussion of songs of satire and protest and the art lyric.

Secular Lyrics of the Xivth and Xvth Centuries

<i>Secular Lyrics of the Xivth and Xvth Centuries</i>

The Secular Lyric in Middle English

<i>The Secular Lyric in Middle English</i>