Lola Abs Osta is a PhD student at the University of Leicester in the final phase. Her current research deals with musical representations of Lord Byron’s poetry in the Romantic programme music it inspired. Her interest in intermedial relations was initiated at an interdisciplinary conference where she presented a paper and an original song recording (2015) based on T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. After earning a Teaching Licence (2009) in English Language and Literature at the Lebanese University, she pursued a Diploma of Advanced Studies in English Language and Literature (2014), researching intersectionality in Toni Morrison’s novels. She also holds a Master’s degree in piano from the Lebanese National Higher Conservatory of Music in Beirut (2015) and Licence in solo piano from Trinity College, UK (2008).
'Re-presentation of Poetry in Programme Music and Semiotic Meanings: An Intermedial Analytical Method'
Lyrics in songs assume the foreground, whereas accompanying music provides rhythm or mood, as it is sometimes considered less important than the words. On the other hand, programme music, which is instrumental, re-presents its extra-musical influences such as poetry, nature, or sculpture. Instrumental music exists in time, when it is heard, and a competent listener will capture moments in the music that remind them of previous parts or other music, using associative memory. This paper examines the intermedial relationship between Lord Byron’s Childe Harold and European nineteenth-century programme music. It applies my three-fold intermedial method of analysis. Firstly, historical and biographical contexts set the stage for validating and corroborating the following comparisons. Secondly, prosody and other values in the poetic language as well as their melopoetics—meanings emerging from the combination of poetic sounds and rhythms—provide an outline of possibly transmuted data. Thirdly, musical semiotics, composer idiolect, and topic theory help shape an interpretation from significations. The results suggest a profound equivalence or analogy at semiotic and semantic levels, and they determine the extent of Byron’s reception and influence.
Keywords: Romanticism, Byron, programme music and poetry, intermediality.
Zhongxing Zeng is a Ph.D. (English Literature) candidate currently studying in the English Department at Arizona State University. His research interests include William Blake, English Romanticism, English-Chinese Literary Translation, and Poetry-Music Adaptation. He is also a singer-songwriter with publications of original music on NetEase Music, Apple Music, and Spotify under the artist name 曾寅.
'Translating Poetry into Song: A New Take on William Blake’s “The Blossom”'
Since the 1920s and in the wake of emergent psychoanalysis, sexual perspectives have grown increasingly prominent in interpreting the latent/patent meanings of William Blake’s poem ‘The Blossom’. By employing intertextual analysis, literary translation, and musical adaptation, my current project explores poetic elements in the verbi-voco-visual dimensions of the poem (Cf. modernist stream of consciousness writing from the same period, especially James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake). ‘The Blossom’ also deploys an intertextual Christian perspective that helps to unify the image and the words by evoking the context of the Annunciation and the Jesse Tree. My literary translation preserves the intertextual foreignness that captures this evolving balance between semantic and sonic counterparts in Chinese. Through cross-media adaptation, I demonstrate that ‘The Blossom’ is not merely figuratively, but essentially, a singable song from Songs of Innocence. Seen through three interconnected lenses of literary interpretation and creative transformation, the artistic radiance of ‘The Blossom’ proves to be an ever-expanding and ever-inviting portal for readers across countries and centuries.
Keywords: translation, intertext, Christian perspective, musical adaptation.
Kriti (she/ her) is a Ph.D. student in English Literature at The University of Arizona. She completed her undergraduate degree at Delhi University, India, and she holds an MA in English Literature from Newcastle University, the U.K. Her interests include British Romantic Poetry and Periodicals, the long nineteenth century, Radicalism, and Gender and Sexuality.
'Reading Love in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray'
The Picture of Dorian Gray has long been read in the context of themes of homoeroticism and Uranian love (a term adopted by advocates of gay emancipation in the Victorian era) despite the author's revisions. The relationship between the characters in the novel, however, is complicated through their relationship with the hidden picture, which portrays Gray’s increasingly corrupt life in the context of immorality and evil of the soul, disguised by a façade of physical beauty. Gray’s wickedness is equated with disguised physical ugliness. Through the interpersonal relationship between the characters and the painting, this paper explores the idea of potential love portrayed in the novel. How is perception of personhood affected through a visual piece of art such as a picture, and what and how does a gazer perceive when they look at the subject, versus the art itself? These questions will be investigated through a discussion of close reading and analysis of the novel, the reader’s interaction with the painting and the actual character of Dorian Gray. In addition, the novel will be interpreted through examining aspects of philosophical concepts of love and sexual desire, specifically Scruton’s idea of “first-person perspective” and Plato’s concept of Eros.
Keywords: art, queer, homoeroticism, love.
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