‘The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly while the Fowler Deceives the Bird’: Sirens in the Later Middle Ages

Leach, Elizabeth Eva

doi:10.1093/ml/gci250

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Imagining the siren as half-woman halfbird makes her singing ability even more prominent and expected; it also promotes the siren's pairing with the nightingale as her female songster counterpart." 42 In this quote, Leach compares sirens to nightingales, birds known for their powerful singing voices and beautiful tunes, due to sirens' original appearance as half-bird, half-human creatures. The connection between singing birds and sirens remains a common theme throughout Medieval literature.…”

Section: The Medieval Siren's Songmentioning

confidence: 99%

Idealizing the Bodies of Medieval Mermaids: Analyzing the Shifted Sexuality of Medieval Mermaids in the Presence of Medieval Mermen

Crull¹

2021

BUJ

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By Chloe Victoria Ruby Crull I n Medieval manuscript images from 1200 to 1400, mermaids appear as supernatural female archetypes performing a variety of acts like standing idle, playing musical instruments, embodying sirens to lure sailors, and using weaponry. These early images show mermaids with short or partially concealed hair and sagging breasts. Medieval manuscript images begin depicting mermen in the 1400s, with the mermen performing acts like wielding weaponry, playing musical instruments, and raising phallic objects over their heads. These mermen appear primarily clothed in cloth garments or metal armor with head coverings and weaponry. As images of mermen appear, mermaids embrace a more decorative role with depictions of them primarily combing their hair and looking into mirrors while neglecting most of their previous actions. Medieval mermen act as heroic entities of the Medieval merfolk species, consequently forcing Medieval mermaids to forfeit their agency and serve as sexual entities of the Medieval merfolk species.

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Section: The Medieval Siren's Songmentioning

confidence: 99%

Idealizing the Bodies of Medieval Mermaids: Analyzing the Shifted Sexuality of Medieval Mermaids in the Presence of Medieval Mermen

Crull¹

2021

BUJ

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“…Kim's paper threw new light on the anti-semitism of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale by combining manuscript study, musicology and textual criticism, while paying close attention to critical race theory. This is a fascinating approach, but one that is, unfortunately, still all too likely to receive negative critiques, if the controversy over Elizabeth Eva Leach's work on gender and medieval music theory is anything to go by (see Leach, 2006a;Leach, 2006b;Fuller, 2011;and Leach, 2011). Continuing conservative resistance to new ideas makes the risktaking and experimental work of scholars such as Kim as well as Leach all the more urgent.…”

Section: The Futures Of Queer Philologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a queer philology

Magnani

Watt

2018

Postmedieval

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“…The narrator of Machaut's Voir dit sends notated music to the noble Toute Belle, expecting her to perform it. For further evidence that women performed mensural polyphony, see Leach 2006. Return to text 12. That the composition being performed is a motet is clear not only from the miniature's position at the head of the motet section, but also from the words "tenor" and "dame" that are visible on the scroll.…”

Section: Fons/o Livoris (M9)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Intelligibility Redux

Zayaruznaya

2017

MTO

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The medieval composers of polytextual motets have been charged with rendering multiple texts inaudible by superimposing them. While the limited contemporary evidence provided by Jacobus’s comments in theSpeculum musicaeseems at first sight to suggest that medieval listeners would have had trouble understanding texts declaimed simultaneously, closer scrutiny reveals the opposite: that intelligibility was desirable, and linked to modes of performance. This article explores the ways in which 20th-century performance aesthetics and recording technologies have shaped current ideas about the polytextual motet. Recent studies in cognitive psychology suggest that human ability to perform auditory scene analysis—to focus on a given sound in a complicated auditory environment—is enhanced by directional listening and relatively dry acoustics. But the modern listener often encounters motets on recordings with heavy mixing and reverb. Furthermore, combinations of contrasting vocal timbres, which can help differentiate simultaneously sung texts, are precluded by a blended, uniform sound born jointly of English choir-school culture and modernist preferences propagated under the banner of authenticity. Scholarly accounts of motets that focus on sound over sense are often influenced, directly or indirectly, by such mediated listening.

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‘The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly while the Fowler Deceives the Bird’: Sirens in the Later Middle Ages

Cited by 14 publications

References 34 publications

Idealizing the Bodies of Medieval Mermaids: Analyzing the Shifted Sexuality of Medieval Mermaids in the Presence of Medieval Mermen

Idealizing the Bodies of Medieval Mermaids: Analyzing the Shifted Sexuality of Medieval Mermaids in the Presence of Medieval Mermen

Towards a queer philology

Intelligibility Redux

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