Dissertation Index



Author: Vlagopoulos Panos

Title: Le noble rhetorique: Mental Models in the Song Production of Guillaume de Machaut

Institution: Ionion State University

Begun: September 1995

Completed: June 1998

Abstract:

The introduction contains a critique of current reductionist interpretation models and argues for the use of - a variant of - radical constructivism in the attempt to gain historic-musicological knowledge. Some of the key-notions put in use are mental models, metaphors, observer and reflexivity. On this basis the goal of the research is set as: to first distinguish fourteenth-century mental models in a number of different areas, from education to literature and everyday life, then find relevant - not merely similar - models of musical thinking in the song production of Guillaume de Machaut. Machaut's opus is considered as the result of a highly ecletic, complicated, past- as well as future-orientated artistic attitude, which I try to illuminate using the notion of reflexivity and self-reflexivity: this is brought about by an analytical examination of concrete compositional techniques and an investigation of an -implicit- Machaudian theory of genres, which is shown to be a prerequisite for self-reflexivity and, at the same time, to be regulated by it.

Keywords: Guillaume de Machaut, Ars nova, formes fixes, radical constructivism, metaphor, mental model

TOC:

A. Fourteenth-Century Mental Models

Introduction
Sciences
Aristotelian Metaphysics, Sign Theory of Occam and Oresmian Physics
Time and Measurement

Ars Nova Ideology
Antiquus/modernus/novus
Classification Models and Genres
Time and Measurement

B. Machaut's Musical Mind

Compositional Techniques: Floskeln and Tenor Types
Genre and the Fourteenth-Century Ordenance Concept
Reflexivity and Self-Reflexivity As Keys to Machaut’s Concept of
Composition
Conclusions

Contact:

Panos Vlagopoulos
Ag. Sofias street 24
17123 Nea Smyrni
Athens/Greece
OR
Vas. Sofias & Kokkali
11521 Athens/Greece
tel +301 7282772 / 9343959
fax +301 7259196
panovlag@otenet.gr


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