The Medieval Studies Certificate Program and the Department of Music, CUNY Graduate Center, Present:
Sarah Kay
Professor of French Literature, Culture and Thought, NYU
“How Opera Taught Me to Read”
Friday, March 15, 4:00
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue
Room 6494
Now that medievalists read most of their works more on screen than in books, more in
manuscript than in print, we need to reimagine the act of reading as responding not just
to a text but also to the sight and sound of the page. Reading like this requires
imagination that is not oriented mainly toward the image as a visual phenomenon but
combines the inner reflexes of all the senses. We could think of such reading as the
process of watching, listening to, and participating in an inner theater; except what is
being played on that inner stage is not a play but an opera. Drawing on French and
Occitan songbooks and works with inserted lyrics, this paper outlines a way of thinking
about a medieval imagination that can conjure sound as well as image, and time as well
as space.