Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the relationship between Eros and music in Early Modern culture and literature. It situates the linkage of Eros and music within its epistemological and philosophical background, tracing the bondage between theories of Eros and of music back to Ficino and the Neoplatonists. The book explores the parallel discourse of the Early Moderns on the doctrines of Platonic love and the theory of speculative music, both of which carry the inherent concept of harmony. It describes the twofold nature of both Eros and music as metaphysical agents, defines their relationship as a dynamic principle, a state of constant tension, and assesses the ambiguity of action, focusing on the ambiguities of music's erotic action. The book envisages ideas of music in the English epyllion, a poetic genre which articulates the erotic and rhetorical trivializations of music in a subversive poetics of desire.