Music, sin, and redemption in Victorian visual culture and literature
Item
-
Title
-
Music, sin, and redemption in Victorian visual culture and literature
-
Identifier
-
d_2009_2013:06546925fe7a:10058
-
identifier
-
10074
-
Creator
-
O'Connell, Julia Grella,
-
Contributor
-
Barbara R. Hanning
-
Date
-
2009
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Music | Art history | Religious history | English literature | Evelyn Innes | Hermann Cohen | music iconography | pre-raphaelites | Victorian visual culture | william holman hunt
-
Abstract
-
"Music, Sin, and Redemption in Victorian Visual Culture" seeks to identify the ancient theological tropes of the identification of music with sin and of its abandonment with spiritual conversion, and to demonstrate the cultural persistence of these tropes into the modern era. The appearance of music symbolism in the socially-committed, quasi-religious paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites and their circle, especially in works that treat the prominent Victorian theme of the "fallen" woman, provides evidence that music's connection to both sin and redemption survived at least as late as the nineteenth century, and that, even more remarkably, it was translated fairly easily into the cultural lexicon (Protestant, materialist) of Victorian Britain. My study examines this type of music iconography in close readings of the paintings The Awakening Conscience (1853) by William Holman Hunt and Take Your Son, Sir (1851-1892, unfinished) by Ford Madox Brown.;Moreover, the association of the abandonment of music with religious awakening (a process of conversion that, in Renaissance iconography, evokes the symbolism of both Saint Cecilia abandoning worldly music Mary Magdalene abandoning music altogether) found its way into the narratives of at least two Victorian novels, George Moore's Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa, as well as giving a formal structure to the notable religious conversion of pianist and composer Hermann Cohen, who laid aside worldly music to become a Carmelite priest.;Compounding the persistence of the music-sin-redemption topos in visual and literary culture, advances in audio technology in the nineteenth century elevated the sense of hearing to a new level of importance, giving the idea of religious conversion accomplished "through the ear" (as, I argue, the famous fourth-century conversion of Saint Augustine was) a place in both the Victorian imagination and in the historical narrative.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
2009_2013.csv
-
degree
-
D.M.A.
-
Program
-
Music
