ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a series of reflections on the relationship between music and language. The contributions consider both the consequences for theories of language of analogies with music, and the challenge posed to music by its apparent assimilation by literary theory. The book explores works in which connections between music and literature are especially germane to the interrogation of gender — an important dimension of recent research on literature and music. It scrutinizes the intransigent correlations between language and music, with specific reference to Jacques Derrida and deconstructive theory. The book examines a once copious sub-genre of British poetry, namely, that featuring women at the pianoforte. It investigates the operation within Victorian and Edwardian poetry of particular feminine and musical tropes more readily associated with realist prose.
