Dominick Argento's Miss Havisham's Wedding Night is the least explored of his artistic output. A monodrama in one act for soprano, Miss Havisham's Wedding Night contains some of Argento's most beautiful and challenging music of his compositional output. The purpose of a detailed analysis of the structure and content of Argento's Miss Havisham's Wedding Night is to facilitate the solo vocal performer's interpretation. Argento's setting of Miss Havisham's Wedding Night is unique in that he musically translates the manic psychological state of the literary character. Argento structured the one act opera in such a manner that the music would illuminate the text and the audience might connect with the unstable psychological episodes and outbursts demonstrated by Miss Havisham. To that end, each section and phrase has its own psychological motivation, which in turn demands a varied musical and dramatic interpretation. Utilizing selected scenes from Miss Havisham's Wedding Night, the researcher will analyze Argento's musical manifestation of Dickens's literary work. This research will include an investigation into the manner in which Argento uses the shape of melody and the musical phrase along with the harmonic materials to enhance the text and dramatic content. The author will explore the musical nuances Argento incorporates in an effort to develop and portray Miss Havisham's psychological state. Through an analysis of the orchestral writing the author will show how Argento's aesthetic balance between the music and text represents the emotional and psychological implications of the monodrama.

Le divorce comme objet d’étude littéraire, la proposition peut surprendre. La répartition distributive des champs et des domaines de pensée exigerait que l’on en fasse, au choix, le sujet d’une réflexion historique, politique, juridique, sociale ou morale. De littérature, il n’est en revanche point question. En 1884, la réhabilitation du divorce dans la législation française est pourtant l’œuvre d’une combinatoire inédite entre politique et littérature. Depuis les tribunes et les colonnes des journaux, dans les essais et dans les livres, la narration des malheurs matrimoniaux d’hommes et de femmes pris dans les tenailles de la loi, se débattant contre une fatalité civile qui contraint leur vie privée et conjugale, crie en faveur du démariage. Alors que les liens entre le récit et la revendication d’une désunion légale sont séculaires, noués notamment dans les œuvres de George Sand, le combat de plumes mené contre l’indissolubilité du mariage va significativement révolutionner la pensée de la littérature à thèse, encourager une réflexion sur la fonction de l’écrivain, sur son rapport au droit, et démontrer le pouvoir de la littérature sur les mœurs et sur la rédaction des lois. Outil d’analyse précieux pour comprendre le fait intellectuel, littéraire et narratif des débuts de la IIIe République, le motif du démariage sert de plus l’étude de la représentation de la conjugalité dans le récit français de la fin du XIXe siècle. Devenu légal, le divorce bouleverse en effet l’imaginaire du récit de mœurs privées et inaugure de nouvelles situations narratives : la rencontre avec l’ancien époux, la jalousie du nouveau mari, la seconde nuit de noces, le passé sexuel de la femme deviennent bientôt les lieux communs et les lois narratives du genre. La promulgation du divorce éprouve néanmoins rudement les coutumes narratives françaises : en offrant une solution au récit d’adultère, le divorce brise un modèle narratif séculaire, et oblige le récit à repenser ses fatalités et ses formes. / Divorce as an object of literary study, the proposal may surprise. The distinctiveness of fields and areas of research requires that a choice be made to study the question from a historical, political, legal, social or moral point of view. Literature, however, is never even considered. In 1884, the rehabilitation of divorce in French legislation was the result of an unusual combination of politics and literature. From the editorials and columns of the newspapers, in essays and in books, the narration of matrimonial misfortunes of men and women caught strangled by the law, wrestling against a civil inevitability that constrains their private and conjugal life, clamors for un-marriage. While the ties between literature and the claims for legal disunion are secular, linked in the works of George Sand, the battle of pens fighting against the indissolubility of marriage will significantly change the thinking of engaged literature and encourage a reasoning on the role of the writer, his relation to the law, and to demonstrate the power of literature on morals and the drafting of legislation.As a valuable analytical tool to understand the intellectual, literary and narrative aspects of the beginnings of the Third Republic, the un-marriage topic can be used to study the representation of conjugality in the French narrative of the end of the 19th century. Henceforth legal, divorce in fact transforms the imagination of literature on private morals and inaugurates new narrative situations: the encounter with the former husband, the jealousy of the new husband, the second wedding night, and the sexual past of the woman, all soon become common practice in the literary genre. The promulgation of divorce nevertheless rudely tests French narrative customs: by offering a solution to stories of adultery, divorce breaks a secular narrative model, and obliges literature to rethink its fatalities and its forms.