Imagining Hearing Song

This chapter considers the advantage and disadvantages of imagination. Troubadours and trouvères imagine songs they might sing through visual and tactile cues of manuscript transmission and imagining. The chapter elaborates on Aristotle's work on senses, wherein sound is perceived through hearing, touch, and vision. It explains how song is sensed and imagined as referenced in D'aiso laus Dieu by Marcabru and Nés qu'on porroit les estoilles nombrer by Machaut. The differences between Marcabru and Machaut reflected a historical development from a more sensation-oriented understanding of imagination to a more cognitively oriented one. Additionally, each poet has different understanding of imagination, which is clear from their treatment of the relationship between sight and hearing.