Polyphonic Voices: Poetic and Musical Dialogues in the European Ars Nova

Abstract

The title of the present volume, Polyphonic Voices, alludes to the synergistic and interdisciplinary nature of the studies that it contains: it evokes the voices of polyphonic chant, which in the so-called Ars Nova reached unprecedented levels of complexity and sophistication, as well as Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of polyphony, inspired by music theory and conceived as a structural element of the novel. According to Bakhtin, the polyphony of a literary text, also defined as “pluridiscursivity”, indicates a multi-voiced dialogue between characters, episodes or languages. Such polyphony, given by the continuous interaction of any discourse with other pre-existing ones (not necessarily attested in written form), generates the simultaneous presence of different and sometimes conflicting points of view, but it does not necessarily imply the evocation of other literary texts.