This thesis must be regarded as an outline, rather than an exhaustive study, of the inter-relationship of music and poetry during the Middle Ages (that is, from the middle of the twelfth to the end of the fifteenth century).
It is always difficult to set limits for creative movements and, when they have been set, to justify them and to work consistently within them, for one cannot make definite divisions between movements, nor confine trends of thought and creative impulse within the boundaries of a definite space of time. The year 1150 was chosen as the first limit of this essay because little in English has come down to us from the first half of the century, and the small amount that has, belongs to the Old English rather than the Middle English tradition. Since medieval and renaissance trends overlapped each other throughout the entire fifteenth century the terminal limit (1500) had to be chosen arbitrarily. The adoption of 1500 has more than the convenience of a round number to recommend it, however, for most of the literature of the fifteenth century belongs to the Middle English tradition; even those developments at the end of the century which look forward to the renaissance are not of such a revolutionary character that they cannot he considered as still part of medieval literature.
While music shows some analogies with all its sister arts, it is the art of poetry that it resembles most. The present work, therefore, deals primarily with the characteristics of the form and style of medieval music (special emphasis being given to the music of the church) and its influence on poetic forms like the lyric and liturgical drama. The main contention of the thesis is that, during the monodic period of music, the two arts were completely dependent on one another. With the development of polyphony, however, music became so intricate that it could no longer be used as a vehicle for words. The old union of poetry and music was gone, never to return in quite the same way again. Although it is true that music and poetry came together for a brief period in the Elizabethan Age it was not the same kind of unity. In the renaissance, music and poetry were two mature arts that enhanced one another; either one could be enjoyed without the other, but, in the Middle Ages, (that is, the period in which monodic music flourished) neither the music nor the poetry was complete in itself — they were created for one another. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/40321 |
| Date | January 1957 |
| Creators | Badger, Sophie A. F. |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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