Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain
I ran into Gillen Wood today--or rather, we crossed paths in the lovely Spring sunshine in front of the English building--and was pleased to learn that the first copies of his new book--Romanticism and Music Culture in Britain, 1770-1840: Virtue and Virtuosity--have arrived.
Here is a brief book description pasted in from the Cambridge University Press website: "Music was central to everyday life and expression in late Georgian Britain, and this is the first interdisciplinary study of its impact on Romantic literature. Focussing on the public fascination with virtuoso performance, Gillen D'Arcy Wood documents a struggle between sober ‘literary' virtue and luxurious, effeminate virtuosity that staged deep anxieties over class, cosmopolitanism, machine technology, and the professionalization of culture. A remarkable synthesis of cultural history and literary criticism, this book opens new perspectives on key Romantic authors – including Burney, Wordsworth, Austen and Byron – and their relationship to definitive debates in late Georgian culture."
Gillen will also be presenting the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' 2010 Humanities Lecture in the Spurlock Museum lecture hall on Thursday, April 1st at 4:30 p.m. His lecture will be called "Climate Denial and the Philosopher-King of Java: Rewriting History through an Ecological Lens," and I hope to see many colleagues and area alumni there. I consider it a huge and well-deserved honor for him to have been asked to give this lecture, and feather in the department's proverbial cap as well.
Congratulations on both counts, Gillen!
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