Music and the English Lyric Poem: Explporations in Conceptual Blending

Abstract

Music and The English Lyric Poem: Explorations in Conceptual Blending

Although lyrics are addressed primarily to the ear, the development of lyric poetry, that is of 'lyrical' poetry that is not necessarily meant to be sung , is partly the consequence of the rise of print communication and tends to "address the ear through the eye". As a result, there was a development, from the Renaissance, of linguistically and pragmatically dense poetry; essentially poetry to be encountered through reading, rather than hearing. When such poetry is set to music we have two aesthetic and communicative modes presented to the same sense-modality. And yet the complexity of poetry is partly the result of a particular reading strategy; to read a poem is to read words as poetry. In doing so we make 'vertical' semantic connexions which are more difficult to construe when addressed to the ear in a musical setting. Thus there is a tension between the movement of the music, heard as a temporal, sonic medium, and the complexities of the poem, conceived as spatial, graphic form. This dissertation explores the relationship between poetry and music through a consideration of the theory of conceptual blending.