Naomi Levine, The Burden of Rhyme

rape' cited by Draucker have clear socio-political aims, it is less clear what labelling musical encounters between literary characters as 'actual instances of rape' achieves (103, 102).The risk of obscuring the specificity of violence inherent to rape and potentially encouraging metaphoric deployments of the word may not be worth the analytical benefits of this designation.Ultimately, though, Sounding Bodies is a compelling examination of how literature conveys 'music's queer, erotic possibilities' (5).It also provides a foundation for further, allied research; for one, references to acoustical science's impact on deaf pedagogy, 'crippled instruments', and a violin likened to 'an invalid' leave one curious about how a disability studies framework could further illuminate the body's centrality to discussions of sound in Victorian literature (32, 164, 156).For those not embroiled in the subfields that Draucker contributes to, the book remains valuable.She persuasively suggests that Victorian literature offers alternative ways of being and connecting in the world, one reason why teaching it continues to matter.Music is one instrument, among many, for discerning this within the period's fiction.Of course, Sounding Bodies resonates in contexts beyond the literary, too; coincidentally, while reading the book I attended a performance featuring the work of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a composer discussed by Draucker for challenging the pervasive whiteness of fin-de-siècle classical music.With this book in mind, I was acutely aware of the intimate physicality of the soundsconnecting performers, auditors, instruments, and the performance spacewhich enhanced the romanticism of the music itself

Ambivalence · Feeling · Narrative · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Poetry Analysis and Criticism