Matches in SemOpenAlex for { <https://semopenalex.org/work/W585425093> ?p ?o ?g. }
Showing items 1 to 48 of
48
with 100 items per page.
- W585425093 abstract "In this captivating work, Carmen Trammell Skaggs examines the discourse of opera -- both the art form and the social institution -- in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature. Through the lens of opera, she maintains, major American writers -- including Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Louisa May Alcott, Kate Chopin, Willa Cather, Henry James, and Edith Wharton -- captured the transformations of a rapidly changing American literary landscape. Although they turned to opera for different reasons, they all saw a twofold function in the art form: a means of expressing a private aesthetic experience and a space in which to perform highly ritualized social functions. Skaggs opens with an exploration of Whitman, who believed that the opera singer infuses ordinary speech with an element of the divine. Through his poetry, he sought to transform these sacred intonations into vehicles of an artistic transcendence that could be experienced by his audience. Skaggs then turns to Poe and Alcott, who frequently imitated the excesses of opera in their fiction, flamboyantly enjoying the element of the absurd. Using opera as a setting in their work allowed them to explore the fallibility of human sensibility, especially our susceptibility to deception. Chopin and Cather, Skaggs shows, empowered their heroines with a voice, a medium for artistic transcendence, but they were also influenced by the growing popularity of Wagnerian opera -- and of the idea that only through a sublimation of life can transfiguration of the soul occur. The true artist, they believed, inevitably lived a solitary life, sacrificing all for art. In the diva, for instance, Cather saw the ideal embodiment of the female artist. On the other hand, James and Wharton, Skaggs explains, recognized the opera box as the ideal setting for social considerations of class, codes, and customs in many of their stories and novels. Past literary critics have employed musical terminology to evoke what opera historian Herbert Lindenberger describes as a nonverbal dimension beyond what we ordinarily take to be the realm of but many of these same scholars warily embraced an approach. After all, the operatic often suggests artificiality and extravagance -- qualities usually seen as negative in writing. Despite the undisputed canonical status of many of the works Skaggs explores, at least a few of them might also be described in similarly (and disparaging) terms. The critical discourse of opera, however, offers an ideal vehicle for opening these texts in a new way. Unveiling a heretofore seldom-noticed connection between the rise of opera in America and the flowering of American literature, Skaggs's noteworthy study will inform and enlighten literary scholars, musicologists, and lovers of both opera and literature." @default.
- W585425093 created "2016-06-24" @default.
- W585425093 creator A5070538371 @default.
- W585425093 date "2010-01-01" @default.
- W585425093 modified "2023-09-27" @default.
- W585425093 title "Overtones of Opera in American Literature from Whitman to Wharton" @default.
- W585425093 hasPublicationYear "2010" @default.
- W585425093 type Work @default.
- W585425093 sameAs 585425093 @default.
- W585425093 citedByCount "1" @default.
- W585425093 countsByYear W5854250932012 @default.
- W585425093 crossrefType "book" @default.
- W585425093 hasAuthorship W585425093A5070538371 @default.
- W585425093 hasConcept C124952713 @default.
- W585425093 hasConcept C142362112 @default.
- W585425093 hasConcept C52119013 @default.
- W585425093 hasConcept C530479602 @default.
- W585425093 hasConceptScore W585425093C124952713 @default.
- W585425093 hasConceptScore W585425093C142362112 @default.
- W585425093 hasConceptScore W585425093C52119013 @default.
- W585425093 hasConceptScore W585425093C530479602 @default.
- W585425093 hasLocation W5854250931 @default.
- W585425093 hasOpenAccess W585425093 @default.
- W585425093 hasPrimaryLocation W5854250931 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W194508966 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W1972921966 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W1977622367 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2007505820 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2017796651 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2025776295 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2066224255 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2077098060 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2094938348 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2166990317 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2172023978 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2210912132 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W233187003 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2332636983 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2561192300 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W271764929 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W285619408 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W2922335968 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W657868851 @default.
- W585425093 hasRelatedWork W68393325 @default.
- W585425093 isParatext "false" @default.
- W585425093 isRetracted "false" @default.
- W585425093 magId "585425093" @default.
- W585425093 workType "book" @default.