Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe

Thomas A. DuBois

Description

Focusing on particular characters, situations, or emotions—usually with little or no explicit plot—lyric song poses interpretive challenges to the listening audience. Without an overt plot, how does one understand what a song is about? Are there rules or norms for how to interpret them? Do these rules remain the same from culture to culture, or do they vary?

By looking at the ways in which cultures in Northern Europe interpret lyric songs, Thomas A. DuBois illuminates both commonalities of interpretive practice and unique features of their musical traditions. DuBois draws on sets of lyric songs from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland to explore the question of meaning in folklore, especially the role of traditional audiences in appraising and understanding nonnarrative songs.

DuBois's examples range from the medieval and early modern periods to the late twentieth century. His nuanced study explicates folk practices of interpretation—a "native hermeneutics" existing alongside folk songs in North European oral tradition. He examines lyric songs—particularly formal laments—embedded with prose or poetic narratives; the ritual use of lyric as charms and laments in premodern Europe; the development of personalized meanings within hymns and devotional prayers of the high Middle Ages; Shakespeare's lyric songs and their demands on the audience; and the ways in which professional lyric singers encourage certain interpretations of their songs. The only study to examine a range of northern European lyric traditions as a unified group, Lyric, Meaning, and Audience in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe will be of interest to scholars in medieval studies, literary studies, and folklore.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Medieval
• Idioma inglés
• Idioma galés
• Edad Media
• Scandinavian
• Middle Ages
• Irish
• English
• European
• Welsh
• History
• Scottish
• Musique irlandaise
• Anglais

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268159443
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Lyric, Meaning, andAudiencein the Oral Traditionof Northern Europe

Thomas A. DuBois

Lyric, Meaning, and Audience

in the Oral Tradition of Northern Europe

Poetics of Orality and Literacy

general editor John Miles Foley

Lyric, Meaning,    Audience      Oral Tradition   Northern Europe

       .      

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright ©by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana All Rights Reserved www.undpress.nd.edu

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DuBois, Thomas A. (Thomas Andrew), ‒ Lyric, meaning, and audience in the oral tradition of Northern Europe / Thomas A. DuBois. p. cm. — (Poetics of orality and literacy) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. -:----(pbk. : alk. paper) -:---(pbk. : alk. paper) —History and criticism.. Folk songs —Europe, Northern I. Title.—History and criticism. . Lyric poetry .  .— dc



∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

       

Preface

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        Introduction: Lyrics and the Issue of Meaning

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        Pausing in a Narrative’s March: The Interpretation of Lyrics within Epics

        In Ritual and Wit: The Hermeneutics of the Invocational Lyric

        Conversing with God: Medieval Religious Lyric and Its Interpretation

        Confronting Convention: Reading Reception in Shakespeare’s Use of Lyric Song

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Contents

        Attribution and the Imagined Performer



        Personal Meanings in the Performance of One Man’s Repertoire

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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





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      

I have always wondered what songs are about. This book seeks to answer that question by offering an overall framework and applying it to a variety of lyric songs and song genres from northern Europe. It may seem that I have taken a very simple thing and made it quite complicated. But I hope that, by the end of this book, it will seem that I have taken a complicated thing and made it at least a little simpler. I would like to thank the many people who have contributed vitally to this study. My teachers Kenny Goldstein at the University of Pennsylvania and Leea Virtanen at the University of Helsinki introduced me to the issues at the core of this study, helping me to appreciate the excitement of a topic that they sin- cerely loved and knew backwards and forwards. I would not have written this book without their help. I am also grateful for the guidance and advice I have received over the years from Margaret Mills, Dell Hymes, and Roger Abra- hams; their influence is evident in these pages. I owe a special debt of gratitude to John Miles Foley. I had the good fortune to begin this project while attend- ing a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar titled “The Oral Tradition and Literature” that John hosted at the University of Missouri at Columbia in. I remember fondly sharing with John my first attempts at diagramming my ideas about lyric interpretation, drawn with my young son’s crayons on a hot afternoon. In the years since, John has remained solidly en- thusiastic and supportive of the project. I am delighted that this book appears in his series with the University of Notre Dame Press. Many others have contributed thoughts and advice as I worked on this ˇ book: Gerry Philipsen and Guntis Smidchens at the University of Washington, Seattle; Jim Leary, Scott Mellor, and Jack Niles at the University of Wisconsin– Madison; and Ríonach ui Ógáin, Joe Harris, Senni Timonen, Lauri Harvilahti, Anna-Leena Siikala, Richard Jones-Bamman, Harald Gaski, and Krister Stoor. The two anonymous reviewers who read my manuscript for the University of Notre Dame Press provided me with much wise advice, which I have tried to

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Preface

incorporate in the present work. I also thank Barbara Hanrahan at the Press for her enthusiastic support of this project through the publication stages. I am grateful to all these people for their insights and patience, and I apologize in advance for the errors in my study, all of which I acknowledge as my own. I thank the libraries of the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Uni- versity of Wisconsin–Madison for their sustained devotion to a set of texts and topics that form the heart of this study. And I also gratefully acknowledge the support and honor I received from the National Endowment for the Humani- ties, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Graduate School Research Committee of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. I could not have brought this book to completion without the generous help of Michael and Lizzy Lyne or the good-humored patience of my family, Wendy Vardaman and Conor, Greer, and Brendan DuBois. I thank them for making this possible.

       

Introduction

Lyrics and the Issue of Meaning

Will no one tell me what she sings?— Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-offthings, And battles long ago; Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of today? Some natural sorrow, loss or pain, That has been, and may be again? William Wordsworth,The Solitary Reaper()

For the speaker of William Wordsworth’s classic poem, as for romantic intel- lectuals in general, the folk songs of ordinary peasants fell into two broad cate- gories: the ballad, a narrative song recounting “old, unhappy, far-offthings and battles long ago,” and the lyric, “some more humble lay, familiar matter of today.” Focusing not on an explicit plot but rather on descriptions, situations, charac- ters, and feelings, the lyric becomes more familiar to its audiences and yet more elusive. A song’s character may display sentiments or attitudes immediately com- prehensible to an audience, and yet that audience may still not know much about the speaker whose feelings are described, or the circumstances alluded to in the song, or when the events took place. Indeed, as Wordsworth’s speaker laments his incomprehension, he likewise gives voice to centuries of scholarly frustration at the seeming simplicity and yet persistent opacity of the lyric genre. How is one to interpret a lyric in the absence of a stated narrative? Must one find a plot submerged in its lines, or can other frameworks supply meaning as well? The answer to this question — the focus of this study — is, I argue, as much a

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